Out of the Abyss
by Trygvasson
Summary: Living things are not made to survive the Void. The Void is the catalyst that unmakes Loki, and everything that happens afterwards is merely consequences. Warning: Science! Philosophy! Angst! Nothing graphic though.
1. The Floating Man

**Another shameless Loki-whump, but not graphic. Enjoy.**

**Surprising as it may seem, these characters still belong to Marvel, not to me.**

The anguish of a full-blown identity crisis was the dominant thought in his mind when Loki of Asgard let go of the spear. He used to be "prince of Asgard," "son of Odin and Frigga," "brother of Thor." And then he wasn't. He was instead the child of Asgard's and Odin's greatest enemy, child of Jotunheim, son of Laufey. Brother of no one. He was his antithesis.

Every action Loki took in the days since discovering his monstrous origins was an effort to dissect his identity back out of the festering tumor engulfing it. Laufey could lay no claim to his paternity if he was dead, he reasoned frantically, so Loki killed him. That was not enough either, though, for what if his identity was exposed from within rather than without? Loki had always been different, the "dark prince." It was no longer adequate to be Thor's equal. He had to _become_ Thor. He had to be the crown prince and next king, because otherwise he was vulnerable, otherwise everyone would know he was _really _different, wasn't an Odinson at all and had no right even to be _in_ Asgard, let alone be called its prince... It all made sense now, why he had always had to try harder than Thor to earn half the praise. He was under scrutiny his whole life. He lived now in mortal terror of when Odin's, or Frigga's, judgments would mean he was no longer suitable to _be part of the family. _They were the only ones that he knew _knew,_ and Odin at least had always been waiting for him to fail, he feared. Waiting for him to betray his birth. Well, no longer would he be the _child_ of either side but rather the avatar of Asgard itself and destroy Jotunheim once and for all...

But he was still wrong, somehow. First Heimdall said it. Then Thor said it. Then Odin said it. Somehow, he _wasn't _supposed to destroy the Jotuns, his bestial kin. It was ironic. He had methodically clipped every link he could find between him and the frost giants in his effort to secure his nonexistent place in Asgard. And for that, Thor and Odin rebuked him. His slim ties to home and family were neatly severed in a breath, leaving only the thin shaft of Gungnir to keep him from the abyss. The other end of the spear was in Thor's hand, Odin grasped Thor's boot, and Odin's lips were telling him "no." _No, you did wrongly. No, you failed me. No, you are not worthy of my house. No, you are not of Asgard. No...don't let Thor bear your weight, don't ask me to save you...let go._

Loki let go, and the darkness swallowed him.

For the first hours and days that he fell, the horror of his birthright followed him. But this was not sustainable. That abominable feeling, that inversion of self, died to make way for something greater, something even more unnatural. Beyond all belief, he was not dead, at least, it didn't seem that way. He remained aware, in darkness. This was was not Valhalla, or even Hel, or oblivion. This was a continuation of consciousness in the absence of anything else, and it was terrifying. There was no light and no sound. There was no sensation of gravity, after the first hour or so. Where initially there was bitter, painful cold, this quickly became a numb lack of stimulus, and he did not know why. There was not even hunger or thirst despite what seemed to be days and days, weeks, months. It took him a time to realize he no longer even had the sense of angular momentum when he thought he turned his head. The only thing he _could _feel was the limits of his own form, and he thought that might be an anxious hallucination of his sensory cortex, desperately placing some physical body between his mind and the utter nothingness.

After an undetermined time, the edges of his body were no longer distinct, and in fact rapidly retreated to the mere idea of _I have a body. I am mind and body. I am..._

_I am afraid_. Loki had never understood the profound terror of the unknown that most races lay claim to. He had always looked upon the "great unknown" as a stimulating forum for discovery and entertainment. Now he understood, because his circumstances were entirely incomprehensible. He had fallen into the Void, he knew _that_, and he understood the physics of it, but nobody had ever known what it meant to experience the phenomenon unshielded. And he, from the inside, still didn't, _because there was nothing. _He thought about it for what must have been months, or even _years,_ discarding each possible solution in turn until he was left with nothing but mystery and sterile mathematics again. In the reality of his experience, and there was nothing else to go on, there was nothing _except_ his own thought. Loki grew terrified that the unknown was growing greater and would soon dismantle and swallow his mind entirely. A living mind requires energy, requires stimulus. He was running out of stimulus because he was running out of ideas. His mind was feeding off its own memories, and what would happen when he forgot something? How would he know? How would he get it back? How long would his mind be able to continue without succor?

He noticed when he started thinking in circles: he was afraid because he thought he might go mad(der) because he could not hold his mind intact in the midst of this great _nothing _when his thoughts lacked an anchor besides terror... The circle eventually shrank.

_I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am._

_I am. I am. I am. I am..._

_I_

**Author's note: this story is kinda an excuse to play around with various philosophical and scientific thought experiments. I imagine the Bifrost as a device that projects a stable wormhole between selected points in the universe but necessarily also creates a real spacetime envelop which is what travelers actually experience along it. When Loki falls from the Bifrost into the Void, he is falling outside of normal spacetime and into the nothing in between dimensions, probably similar to the "quantum realm," actually, since wormholes are one of the places where quantum mechanics and astrophysics meet up and break down. It's basically a magical fluke that his consciousness isn't immediately zapped out of existence along with his physical self (that's why he can't really experience his own body anymore in this chapter). He has essentially become a consciousness trapped inside a singularity of both infinite space and time and nonexistent space and time.**

**The other major idea I was drawing from is Avicenna's "Floating Man" thought experiment. Basically, the scenario is of a man spontaneously created floating in a zero gravity environment with no light and no sound, no outside stimulus, his limbs not touching his body, fingers lightly spread apart, no hair, etc. So no sensation. Is he aware of his existence? Avicenna says yes: it's an argument for the existence of the soul. Read about it on Wikipedia if you're interested.**

**Anyhow, read, review, and enjoy! The first part of the story is drafted, so hopefully I will be releasing it fairly quickly.**


	2. Effigy

It was a favorite tactic of the Children of Thanos to maraud through the Invisible Network, the veins through spacetime favored by the universe's underbelly. There were plenty of interdimensional rifts and wormholes unmapped to the traditional jump points and unpoliced by Asgard. Indeed, the so-called "Branches of Yggdrasil" only included the largest and most stable parts of the network connecting the lucky-few Nine Worlds, and even these were opening up to more discrete travelers since the Asgardians' Bifrost was now defunct in a happy coincidence.

It was a chance encounter that led to the discovery of the Asgardian Puppet. He was Nebula's prize, a thought signature fleetingly detected but easily plucked from the void once she started hunting it. He had the coloring and the raiment of Asgard, long limbs, black hair, and green eyes when she lifted up the lids. He was clearly alive and appeared physically well once she returned him to real spacetime, but he was unarousable. That was no concern to the cyborg, however.

In truth, the prize pleased Thanos and the Other for more than usual. "Never before have my children found a living mind in the Invisible Network without the benefit of a spaceship to contain it," Thanos mused to the Other after Nebula had been dismissed. The discovery was very interesting. The fact that the mind in question was an Asgardian was even better.

"His power must be considerable. I shall make him into such a weapon for you, my lord," the Other hissed in excited agreement.

Thanos snorted and smoothed the hair from the young Asgardian god's forehead. "Make him into another son for me, Imp. Not just a weapon. He is worth it."

The Other hesitated, but bowed agreement and started to set up his tools for the task. After only an hour, though, they were both frustrated. No matter how much pain, shouting, light, or even gentle coaxing they threw at him, the Asgardian was not waking up. If he did not wake up, then he could not be broken, could not be forged, could not be tempered. "This is... _futile!"_ the Other eventually spat.

"Hmmm... Perhaps a return to fundamentals is in order," Thanos said reasonably. "Perhaps he is more damaged than he appears."

The Other grunted in distaste but extracted a handheld medical scanner from the bottom of his cart and passed it over his charge. They both leaned over it, watching the screen suspiciously. There was nothing at all wrong with the Asgardian's body. Turning to his head, the anatomy was again entirely normal, all the way down to the cellular level. The Other blinked, and tapped the scanner, studying it for quite a while. He pinched and prodded some more, still studying his device. "Interesting. Everything is perfectly healthy and yet...his mind is not just asleep, my lord. It is vegetative. There is not enough spontaneous activity to achieve conscientiousness, just enough to maintain vital internal functions." He bared his teeth and looked up at Thanos. "He is _already _broken!"

"Ohh..." This was not a prize but a gift, already broken by the universe or perhaps by Lady Death herself. He could mold this to whatever he chose. But only if he figured out how. He frowned. "The usual methods will not be effective then. You have my permission to experiment with the Mind Stone, Imp."

Progress was slow, for both the Other and Thanos his master were unpracticed with the one Infinity Stone they had claimed as yet. Every day with the gift was another gift from Lady Death as far as Thanos was concerned, however, as he had not had the substrate to _learn_ how to control the stone before. Every day of trial and error and practice was preparing him for his inevitable final quest. And yet...

"I am dissatisfied," Thanos pronounced as he watched the Asgardian walking jerkily across the lab, bend into a squat, then jump into the air. It looked for all the world like a life-sized marionette, and its slack-jawed expression and empty eyes placed it squarely in the uncanny valley.

The Other exhaled through his teeth as he guided the Asgardian back to the worktable and caused it to awkwardly recline before releasing the spell. "I am as well, my lord," he admitted.

Thanos ran a finger along the Asgardian's limp arm. "According to lore, the Mind Stone's power is in accessing and augmenting the powers of the mind. Perhaps we are going about this the wrong way."

"What is your instruction, my lord?"

"You are currently attempting to use the stone to create a false mind. Although I have no doubt the power of the stone is sufficient for this, neither you nor I have the subtlety to conceive of let alone create a fully operational yet independently functioning mind. A mind consists of a billion billion connections and thoughts, and that is simply too complex. You would have to use the stone on _yourself_ to even attempt the conception, and _also _use it to enact the spell, but..." he laughed, and the sound sent a shiver through the Other's bones. "But to use the stone on oneself is to risk oneself."

The Other's gaze flicked back to the stone, then to the Asgardian, then back to his master. He licked his lips nervously, waiting.

"I shall not risk you yet, Imp." Thanos smiled, showing his teeth. "No, as I said, we are going about this the wrong way. We should not be using the stone to create new connections to the Asgardian's body but rather to access what is already there. We know his brain is intact. Use it."

The Other raised a hand to his chin, considering, then grinned back at his master. "Your will be done, my lord."

The next day, after hours of study with the stone and some experimenting on one of their prisoners due for execution, the Other lay a whisper of thought into the Mind Stone, drawing its power to him. Then, slowly, carefully, he threaded the power through each circuit of the Asgardian's brain. He was growing tired and thirsty by the time he finished but dare not pause for fear of losing his progress. Finally, he looked up at his master. Thanos nodded once. The Other fed the stone's energy into the Asgardian, holding his breath in anticipation. Almost immediately, the body stiffened up and started to convulse. The Other cursed and bled the power away again. The seizure abated.

"Do you still have the connection?" Thanos inquired cooly.

"Yes, my lord." The morning's work was preserved, at least.

"Good. Wait a few minutes, then try again. Slower. And Imp, do not damage my prize."

"Of course, my lord."

The second attempt failed exactly as did the first. For the third attempt, they tried using a sedative to ward off the convulsion. That also failed spectacularly. Even more frustratingly, the Other lost half the connections he had worked on that morning.

"We will have to try again tomorrow, my lord, and start over from the beginning. I doubt I will be certain of re-harnessing every circuit otherwise."

"Actually, Imp, I think you should try once more now. We have probably just been overwhelming him by flooding the brain with so much energy. It might work better with a more selective approach. In fact, reduce what you still hold by three quarters. I do not wish to damage him while we tinker."

"Very well... My lord, might I suggest we go further and attempt to isolate perhaps the motor system first? That way, we will be able to spare other regions from experimentation."

"Agreed."

The Other carefully released neural circuits one by one. Then when he was reassured the connectome still linked to the stone was finally winnowed down to something more manageable, he let energy flow into the remaining channels. The whole body jerked, then was still, then jerked again. And again. He cut off the power again, cursing. All he had accomplished was changing what kind of seizures he was causing.

"Again, my pet. _Gently."_

Cautiously, he allowed the barest trickle of power to bleed through. It was still too much, and the Asgardian's face twitched rhythmically. The Other pictured a dam between the stone and his subject, mentally slowing the flow. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but with just a little more force and a little direction from his own thoughts, the Asgardian's arm slowly rose into the air, hand curling into a triumphant fist. The Other smiled, and so did the Asgardian. The Other laughed, and so did the Asgardian. The Other laughed harder and said, "I see I shall have to work on separating _my _motions from _its_, but I think it fair to say this is _excellent _progress." The Asgardian said the same thing, in the same cadence, an echo most delightful to the Other's ears.

Thanos started laughing then too. "He has a sweet voice. You have done well, Imp. Rest you both now, and we will start again in the morning."

The next day was devoted to mapping the Asgardian's brain, isolating each system in turn. It got easier with practice. They were rewarded first with the welcome discovery that their gift was, delightfully, magically gifted! As soon as the Other energized the region in question, a panoply of colors like an aurora burst forth, illuminating the entire laboratory. The Mind stone grew brighter in response, and the room seemed to fill with voices until the Other realized he was somehow unintentionally accessing the thoughts of everyone within a considerable radius... including his _master_! The Asgardian must have latent telepathic abilities. He quickly deactivated the circuits, not wanting to risk hearing something he shouldn't and enraging Thanos, but the Titan only smiled.

"Lady Death's gift is full of surprises."

Next they opened his memory, and the wonders were beyond imagining once they started sorting through.

They had not just any Asgardian, but a prince. Son of old Twice-Blind himself. And this particular prince _knew _so much! He must have been some kind of scholar, they supposed, such a well of information he had within his quiescent brain. Much of it, Thanos already knew of course. But far from all. And then the pièce de résistance... the Asgardian had studied the Infinity Stones in the past, including the Tesseract, which the Children of Thanos had only recently located on Terra. It was clear why the Lady had sent him now. It was time.

It took another month to perfect the Asgardian Puppet, and the final plan was not without risk. Still, there was no glory in a plan without risk. Thanos and the Other did eventually manage to create a working mind for their puppet. The Asgardian's own vegetative mind remained the template, but the Stone was the conscious force that united the various otherwise uncoordinated cognitive systems and give the puppet direction. It was a delicate balancing act, and even a minor physical movement of the Puppet in relation to the stone could perturb the balance of power in each master circuit. The new-forged mind was thus prone to waywardness and frequently drove the Other to fits of spitting rage in his attempts to reign it in.

To Thanos, it was beautiful and impious and rebellious, and he loved it like one of his Children. The downside was that the stone had to go with it to maintain consciousness. There was no way to maintain the spell with any precision from another planet.

Thanos kissed the Puppet's forehead as he placed the staff in its hands. He smiled at it. It was not one of his Children, but it was, more than any of the others, one of his creations. "Are you ready to claim your throne?" He asked it.

It grinned up at him. "I am _burdened_ with glorious purpose," Loki of Asgard agreed.

**Author's note: So yeah, Loki did _not _escape the Void unscathed. Leave a review, tell me what you think!**

**The main idea I'm working with here is the idea of consciousness as an emergent property of the brain. All the various regions of the brain contribute something to the whole, but the resultant behavior and personality is a product of the balancing and reciprocation between them, rather than mere stimulus-response feedback. When Thanos and the other first try to control Loki, they are going about it like programming a computer, and it's clunky. The next attempt causes seizures because they basically just sent a signal to every part of the brain saying "go! go! go!" The trick is in figuring out selectivity. The final spell is basically a relay system between various parts of the brain with a master command of whatever the Other wants to happen. In basic neuroscience, it's mostly a crutch for the defunct thalamus, although the spell is also modulating the cortex to get the "outputs" to line up with the master command.**


	3. Man of Straw

The Other watched Midgard through the eyes of his Puppet. He did not have to lift a finger for the Puppet to rapidly dispatch the handful of humans who attacked it, but he did reign it in slightly to keep it from getting carried away. They needed at least one prisoner, afterall. The Puppet stopped fighting and started speaking to the remaining terrified mortals. "Freedom... Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart... You will know peace." Then the Puppet, clever thing, used the Mind Stone to replicate his own spell, though elegantly adapted to meld with the perfectly conscious humans. The Other was a little jealous of how easily the Puppet could modify its human charges, actually. It was not fair, compared to the laborious process he had taken to create the Puppet. But then, the human minds were intact, just redirected.

This would be fun, it occurred to the Other. He smiled.

Things went smoothly for the most part. He only rarely and gently nudged the spell to keep the Puppet in line as it gathered intelligence from its own human slaves before disbursing them to various tasks and itself heading out to create a distraction. The Puppet's plan was almost too daring in the Other's opinion. It was also, dare he say it, mischievous, but it would probably work. That was enough.

It was certainly entertaining. The Puppet shouted commands and taunts into a crowd of cowering mortals, deliberately terrorizing and mocking them while waiting for the baited trap to lure in its game - the self-styled Avengers, a motley band of trained soldiers and superhuman fighters anticipated to be the most difficult opponent in their task, at least according to the intelligence the Puppet had gathered when it first arrived. "Is not this simpler?" the Puppet crowed. "Is this not your natural state? It is the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

An old human climbed to his feet and retorted in a gravelly voice, "Not to men like you."

"There are no men like me." The Other smiled along with his Puppet, waiting for it to disintegrate the human. That is what he would do as well. Disappointingly, their true prey arrived on time. The man survived.

...

"What's the matter, scared of a little lightning?" That was Captain America, according to their informant.

"I'm not overly fond of what follows..." And there was a thump and clash of thunder. The memory and emotional circuits of the spell blazed in his mind's eye, totally unbalancing the spell and threatening collapse. The feedback hit the Other with a shock of fear, anger and humiliation that were not his own. He could no longer see what was going on on the ground and did not know what was causing it. The feedback intensified with a feeling of... disgust? Memories, again not his, surged into his mind, a confusing montage of remembered pain and laughter, and the face of a young man wreathed in a nimbus of yellow hair. The cascade of negative emotions shifted to something remarkably like affection, or even _hope._

Now, _that _was not within the parameters of the spell he had designed with the Mind Stone. He had deliberately limited the program to curtail spontaneous mental activity outside of the primary goal-directed program, and thereby maximize his own control. The Puppet, unbelievably, was veering alarmingly towards true consciousness, independent of the Other's thought. Or else it was short-circuiting. Either way, it was _not _something the Other particularly wanted to happen away from the lab where he would not be in complete control of the process, whether through the Stone or the more _traditional _methods he used on the Children of Thanos. The Other cursed as he briefly shut down the emotional circuits entirely and quickly worked to reorient the Puppet. They had clearly not field-tested the Puppet sufficiently.

He had it half-corrected pretty rapidly but found he had twisted the visual circuits somehow so that everything was tilted and red-tinged. The Puppet almost stumbled off the cliff before he forced it to sit in the powdery snow. He slackened the spell again and was able to rework it just in time for them to be recaptured. When he was able to fully attend to their surroundings in Terra again, he finally realized with a shudder of uncertainty that there was another Asgardian there now. That was what the memories had been about. Neither he nor the Puppet had planned for that.

...

"Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's _gushing _red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... _pathetic_! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!... I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you!" The Other grinned as the spy's eyes started to bulge with fear. He liked it when the Puppet took its cues from its master. "Slowly," it continued, "intimately, in every way he knows you fear! And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is _my _bargain, you mewling quim!"

"You're a monster!" She fairly whimpered, causing the Other to chuckle.

"Oh no, you brought the monster." _You brought the Hulk. _The spy, unfortunately, understood exactly what the Puppet meant by that comment. The Other cursed to himself and bent over the spell again. He could not have the Puppet _telling _its plan to all and sundry just for laughs.

"You're gonna lose." Agent Coulson's voice broke through his concentration after a few minutes. The Other stilled, listening.

"Am I?"

"It's in your nature."

"Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky... where is my disadvantage?"

"You lack conviction." The Other glowered. He could fix that, if it was indeed the case.

...

"The Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that. What have I to fear?" In the middle of the invasion, the Puppet was just _talking _to Stark rather than killing him, and, horribly, the Other could not figure out how to adjust the spell correctly to change that. It had been finicky, brittle even, ever since Thor's arrival. He lived in fear of another emotional spike.

"The Avengers. That's what we call ourselves; we're sort of like a team. 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' type thing," Stark gibbered on.

"Yes, I've met them," the Puppet answered pleasantly. The last time the Other had tried to change anything, when the Puppet was alone and things were quieter, he had first accidentally gotten the eyes stuck looking to the left, then sent it staggering into a wall as it apparently forgot how to walk correctly when he tried to fix it again, then caused it to bleed incandescent green magic into the air all around it, transforming the floor and walls into a substance resembling volcanic glass and just as prone to shattering. He hardly dared touch the spell once he got it back to semi-normal functioning again.

"Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count here: your brother the demigod; a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breathtaking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins... and _you_, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."

"That was the plan."

"Not a great plan. When they come, and they _will_, they'll come for you."

"I have an army."

"We have a Hulk."

"I thought the beast had wandered off..." Still, this continuing, cloying conversation was becoming ridiculous. The portal for the Tesseract was about to open, and the Chitauri army was poised and awaiting orders. He had to do _something _to redirect the Puppet, as it was showing no sign at all of fighting the Iron Man and instead seemed perfectly content to chat indefinitely. He started tinkering, as gently as he could. He had a bad feeling, though, it was going to go haywire again when they inevitably reencountered and fought with Thor during the invasion.

...

"Look at this! Look around you! You think this madness will end with your rule?" That was Thor, and the Puppet's, _Loki's_, mind was instantly responsive to the plea in the Asgardian's voice. Of course.

"It's too late. It's too late to stop it." The Other sighed as he started siphoning power out of the overactive emotional circuits again. He hated to be proved right.

"No. We can, together." Fortunately, his new, more delicate approach to spellcraft paid off, and the Puppet took the quiet, brotherly moment as an opportunity to stab the Thunder God.

"Sentiment."

He had even managed not to deprive the Puppet of the ability to speak. The Other congratulated himself. It seemed he was getting better at these quick adjustments, even under pressure. They would win. Thanos would be pleased.

...

"Enough! You are, all of you are beneath me! I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by..." The Hulk interrupted the tirade by lifting the Puppet off its feet and slamming it into the floor. Repeatedly.

"Puny god."

The Other screeched in outrage as his spell shattered. Then his screech turned to a whimper. He had probably just lost two Infinity Stones, _and_ the Puppet. Thanos would not be pleased. No doubt, the "Imp" would be meeting Lady Death soon.

**Author's note: well, that was fun. Mostly a plot chapter, but also playing around with brain connections. Loki is not fully conscious and aware, although it looks like he is from the outside. All the usual internal drives are originating with the spell, not organically. But, the Other still can't amp up one part of the brain in service to his spell without causing unintended effects elsewhere. When Thor gets there, that's a huge stimulus for Loki personally but completely unrelated to the Tesseract, thus the "unbalancing" of the spell. The Other tries to pull back on the memories in reaction to Thor and ends up pulling power from nearby visual processing pathways as well (both overlap towards the back of the brain). He tries changing specific behaviors but also ends up with movement problems (walking and gaze deviation, plus magic because where else can I have thal localize?) because those are also in the frontal lobes...**

**It occurred to me while I was writing this that this could also work as an illustration for how Tony's experimentation could have gone wrong, and then right, in the Age of Ultron. After all, it's hard to make a working mind from scratch, even if you have the "hardware" for it, which is how I'm interpreting the brain in this context.**

**By the way, a "man of straw" is basically a weak-willed person easily swayed or changed by others. Someone who doesn't really have strong beliefs of their own.**

**Enjoy, and leave a review!**


	4. Lying

The Avengers assembled around the God of Mischief. He still lay quite still in a pit in Stark's granite floor in the penthouse bar. He did not appear to have moved at all. He might have been dead, except his eyes were open, staring at nothing.

Thor was the first to edge forward, poking his brother with his toe. "Loki." The enemy offered no response. He knelt then and cautiously checked for a neck or skull fracture before tugging Loki into a seated position. "Come on," he grunted. Loki stayed sitting rather than falling back, but that was about all that could be said for him. When Thor let go of his arms, they stayed hovering awkwardly out in front of him. He still was not looking at anything. It was uncanny. The Hulk actually stepped back.

"Is he that hurt?" the Captain asked.

Natasha shook her head immediately, brow furrowed, although Clint was the one who answered. "That's not what you typically see with brain injury. Unless it's different in his species."

"Loki..." Thor whispered.

"Is he faking then?" Tony asked.

"Probably," Natasha said, but she holstered her own weapon and stepped forwards. She tilted Loki's head back and to the side until his eyes were sort of directed to her. Then she let go and repositioned his right arm over his head and the left behind his back. Although the hands wavered slightly in the unnatural position, he barely moved at all and did not watch her when she stood up again. She cocked her head to the side. "Seizure?" she muttered. "No... It's like a catatonia," she said in a confused tone before hastily repositioning the god in a more normal posture.

"What?" Steve and Tony asked together.

"Happens in psychosis sometimes," Clint said shortly. "He's faking. Has to be."

"Only time will tell," Natasha said, shrugging.

"_What is this?_" Thor demanded suddenly, staring back at them.

Steve and Tony looked expectantly at the two spies, while the Hulk appeared to grow bored and sat down behind them, yawning. Natasha hesitated. "Look, I'm no expert. I've only seen something like this once or twice before, a long time ago. I just know that something like this can happen to, ah, humans, sometimes, and it's, ah... It's not because of brain damage or injury, I think. It's more something that happens with mental disorders. Maybe he's got, I don't know, some kind of shell-shock."

"I kind of doubt the thousand-year-old sadistic bastard who _started _the war is going to be the one to come out of it with full-blown PTSD," Clint said sarcastically.

Thor shook his head. "This is not his first battle, nor the bloodiest. Whatever psychic wound you are thinking of, Lady Natasha, our fight with him today is not the cause." He did not look any less worried though as he turned back to gently cup Loki's cheeks and gaze into his empty eyes.

"Who cares about the reason? He's either crazy, or faking it," Clint supplied bluntly. "Not a surprise in either case, and I'm betting on the latter. So let's please put him in the cuffs and figure it out later." To this, Thor had reluctantly to agree, but it was fatigue and hunger that finally dragged him out of Loki's cell a couple hours later. Thor tried everything he could think of to provoke a response from his brother. Tried talking to him, poking him, pinching him, shining lights in his face. He did not even blink. He tried to give him a drink of water, but it dripped back out the side of Loki's mouth. Steve made him leave then, because the indoor rainstorm was shorting out the security system.

The next day found Loki still in handcuffs and muzzle in the same corner of the cell they had left him in before going to get shawarma. In the same position they had left him in. Only Clint was convinced he was still faking catatonia, but they were at a loss as to what could have caused it. Tony had asked Jarvis about it, but his information was essentially the same as Natasha's and Clint's: the condition was associated with psychosis, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Also something called "limbic encephalitis" which Tony found fascinating, apparently some kind of autoimmune condition that could cause psychosis in otherwise healthy people. The only other new information was that the particular flavor afflicting Loki probably fell under the category of "waxy catatonia," and something called electroconvulsive therapy tended to work better on that than, well, non-waxy types. Tony had yet to decide whether he should tell the Thunder God to shock the living daylights out of his crazy brother to see if it would help.

Thor had come up with his own morbid diagnosis, in any case. He announced it as they gathered in the corridor outside Loki's cell. "When I looked at my brother after the battle and again this morning, I did not see him. I saw an empty body. To me, it seems his soul-fire is gone. He is dead."

The other Avengers just stared at him in confusion for a minute. Tony cleared his throat. "Umm... Point Break, I hope this doesn't come as a shock, but he is clearly _not _dead. But, you know, easy mistake to make. They used to kill a lot of people in the Dark Ages by thinking they were already dead and burying them too early. There were also a lot of people who quote-unquote came back to life miraculously, because they weren't actually dead. He's breathing, awake, and even _sitting up_, all of which are definitely symptoms of being alive."

Thor grinned. "You misunderstand me. I admit, I hope he merely sleeps in some way. But I fear that this affliction is _not _a kind of sleep, and he will _not _wake up. His condition is dire, and I wish to return with him to Asgard, where our healers can examine him and make a determination."

"And no doubt the God of Lies in there knows that, and that's why he's a faker-faker, so he can get out of here, away from us, and live comfortably cocooned back home," Clint grumbled.

"It is a possibility," Thor conceded. "But I doubt it. This is not the kind of lie my brother would come up with. It has no artistry. It is demeaning to him."

"_Artistry_? Can I remind the audience again, that he killed eighty people the _first_ two days he was here, then killed Coulson and recklessly crashed the helicarrier when he escaped, and we don't even _know_ the casualties from yesterday."

"And you think the person you have locked in that cell is capable of what we have seen the past few days? For all I know, he was dead from the moment he arrived, Master Barton!" Thor shouted. "You don't know him. You don't know his history or his mind. You don't know his species. Everyone on Asgard thought he was dead for one of your years before I came here. I grant you have every right to be angry at Loki, and I am angered and ashamed by his actions as well, but I would appreciate a little courtesy! The man we have been fighting, though he looks and speaks and walks, even fights exactly the way my brother does, he in other ways bears no resemblance _at all _to the man I grew up with."

"Let me get this straight," Tony broke in again. "You're saying he's dead because he's all evil and stuff?"

"No, I am saying he is dead because his... I am not certain how to say this in your tongue in a way that makes sense... his soul-fire, or motivation, his _animus_ is gone. I don't know how or why. It should not happen, certainly not to one young and fit as he, but I have no idea what has happened to him in the past year since he was lost to the Void between the worlds. There are things that are possible that you have no conception of, and that I do not fully understand nor have the ability to explain. There is a distinct possibility that the person we have been fighting is merely an echo of his dying mind, which has finally faded."

"Oh, obviously. He couldn't possibly be evil all by himself. We should all feel sorry for him, because he's a zombie. Not his fault." Clint snorted in derision.

Thor glowered at him, and ozone scented the room.

Steve laid a hand on Thor's shoulder but looked to Clint as he said, firmly. "Death isn't an apology. I don't think Loki's dead, but imagine if that was _your _brother all the same, whatever is wrong with him." The ozone faded.

"Can I just say, Thor, you have a very wide definition of the word _dead_, and it's going to get you into trouble someday," Tony quipped into the tension.

Thor smiled mirthlessly. "From where I sit, you Midgardians have a rather wide definition of _living_."

"I prefer to think of it as a narrow definition of dead_."_

"Perhaps that is because you mortals, ironically, know nothing of what death truly means."

"I think I should be offended."

"Shut up, Tony," Bruce said, leaning forwards. He smiled, eyes bright with intellectual curiosity. "Okay, Thor. I'm no expert on the dying process, but I know enough to know that even our 'primitive' medicine is pushing the limits every day, keeping people alive in extremis and bringing them back to health from the brink. There's a reason 'brain dead' is almost the only legal dead now. So... talk. You say we mere mortals don't understand death. Enlighten us! Why is Loki dead?"

Thor raised one eyebrow. "Are you mocking me?"

"Not at all. I'm genuinely curious. You're what, a thousand years old and still young? Your people must have a very different perspective on life and death than us."

Thor shook his head. "I have lived almost two thousand of your years, my friend. There are elders at home who have studied the mysteries of life and death longer than I have been alive. I have never... I am no scholar, not of any kind. I cannot explain... But I suppose I will try.

"The first part of that question is what is _life_? You, Man of Iron, would have it that Life is a function of the body. To have a heart that beats, to breathe, to walk... I do not think that is life. Moreover, I can name fifteen examples from history and legend alike that would prove that not to be the case. If a human were to 'live' in this state, and it was truly irreversible, it may last a few years or decades. I think you only do it because you are afraid of death, not because the 'life' is truly prolonged. Asgard has the ability to prolong such a state for a thousand years. The healers of Vanaheim have the ability to sustain the heartbeat in one of their fallen indefinitely, even if the warrior never again awakens and is in fact proven through divination to be long-since feasting in the halls of Valhalla. Is that life to you? A necromancer can grant respiration and freedom of movement to a corpse that has lain dead and embalmed for a week. Is that life? The Dark Elves were said to cast a type of magic on the blood that enhances the physical strength of the body but destroys the original consciousness of the individual undergoing the ritual and supplants it with a single overriding mission; the body and mind then disintegrate when the central command is fulfilled. Is that life? There are many races which have found the way through advanced magic, or science I suppose, to transfer the essence of a living mind to an artificial container, either as a copy or as a unique neural net that left the original body empty. Is that life? Asgard once exterminated a race that lived as a parasite on other lifeforms, stealing infants and modifying their development into a kind of dumb flesh-armor rather than a sentient individual. Is _that _life? There is a race that can regenerate a functioning body from the smallest fragment, to the degree that even should the central nervous system be cut out and destroyed, a new one will grow in its place. But the new brain has no memories of the old. That is life, but is it the same life?" Both Tony and Bruce opened their mouths, but Thor bouldered on, not waiting for questions.

"Now turn the page. What is death? It is the end of life. But what is that end? Loki stabbed me during the battle yesterday. Supposed he struck true, and I had died. Would the death be in the moment of the injury, when my life started to bleed away, or in the moment when my demise became assured, or as you would have it my friend, when my heart stopped beating?

"Death is different in Asgard. Except in battle, death is slow, and it is rare, and it is painful. The ones who die in battle are fortunate because they are taken to Valhalla but also because among the Aesir, the body and mind rarely decline at the same rates. My father is fortunate, in that in his old age, his body is failing first. More and more, he must rely on Odinsleep to sustain it. For many of my elders though, the mind will die long before the ever-resistant body has worn out, and this despite the joint efforts of the best healers in the Nine Realms. When the person inside is gone, it is viewed as respect, and kindness, to send the body with them.

"Yes, Loki's heart still beats. His brain is clearly intact enough that his body can maintain its vital functions and even tone. But if his mind is gone, then he is gone. To the brother that I remember, the mind was everything."

The team was silent for a moment, never having heard Thor say so many sentences in a row before. "That... was quite the info-dump," Bruce finally said. "And I have _so many questions_ for later, but, I mean, sure. There's a point where you have to talk about quality of life and all, but really Thor, it's only been one day. I rather think it's way too early to say he's dead."

"We haven't even examined him properly," Steve finally spoke up. "Thor, I don't think the question before us is _whether _to let you take him back to Asgard but rather _when_. He has a lot to answer for here. If he truly can't speak for himself right now, well, there's no reason to keep him really. And if he _can, _then that raises a whole bunch of security issues too. I hear what you, and Natasha, are saying, that this isn't normal. But you'll excuse me for pointing out that, actually, none of us are medical, let alone experts in whatever has happened to Loki. For all we know this _could _be a temporary shock from a Hulk smash. So let's get more information instead of shouting at each other."

"I don't think we want a Shield doctor down here just yet, Captain," Natasha said quietly. "They'll make a specimen out of him, given half the chance. We really shouldn't let them, even if it's Loki."

"Seconded," Clint said, in a much more controlled tone than he had used earlier.

Steve studied the pair of them. "Then it's on you," he said, looking to Thor for agreement. Loki was his brother, after all. Thor nodded curtly.

Natasha's lips quirked. "I know when a man is dying and when he's broken under torture. That doesn't mean I can diagnose anything else."

Steve shrugged. "It seems to me you're actually eminently qualified, Nat, since those two options are basically what we're looking for."

They scanned Loki's head in Tony's research laboratory in the basement, just in case. It looked normal. Thor again insisted they release Loki back to Asgard, _now, _but Steve convinced him to be patient just a little longer.

Natasha and Clint went in next, hoping to wear the Trickster down. Natasha spent the first five minutes just staring into his eyes. They were red and full of tears.

"Is he...crying?" Clint asked suspiciously from the far side of the room.

"No... I don't think so. I think his eyes are just watering because he's not blinking. At all."

"Huh."

She pulled a penlight from her pocket and shined it in his eyes, one at a time. "They are working though, I think. Clint, help me reposition him on his back." Together, they slid him partway down the bench and leaned him over. He still had the bizarre rigidity like wax or rubber. Natasha pulled out the eye drops she had swiped from Tony's bathroom and carefully dropped one into his eye. He blinked once before resuming his vacant stare. She repeated the exercise on the other eye, and he blinked again.

"Does that mean he's faking?" Clint asked hopefully.

"No, that's a reflex," Natasha said. "I looked it up before we came in here. It's weird though, that he can blink and just doesn't." She clapped at him next, and tried pinching his shoulders and legs, but they didn't get any more of a response.

After an hour of poking and prodding, they had to admit defeat. Natasha carefully closed Loki's eyes before they left.

...

"I'm not getting anything out of him, Fury," Natasha repeated calmly, "And I don't think I'm going to in the near future."

"Ditto," Clint said with ill-grace.

"Seriously? You told me yesterday you thought he was faking, Hawkeye, and now you want to give up on interrogating the literal Invader of Earth?"

Clint grimaced. "He's either not faking, or he's faking too well and is willing to wait us out because he's, you know, _immortal. _Either way, I can't do much about it."

"I think he needs a doctor," Steve said in an undertone. "And if he doesn't need a doctor, then he's just biding his time before escaping and wrecking more havoc." He glanced through the glass wall of the conference room, to where Thor was waiting, smoldering. "Either way, I'm betting both he and we are better off if we send him back to Asgard. They have, ahem, _magic healers,_ and can probably tell what's going on with him a lot better than we can. And they presumably have the means to contain him far better than we can."

Fury drummed his fingers on the table, looking displeased.

Tony coughed indelicately. "Also, Thor is probably going to cause a hurricane if we delay him any longer. Have you looked out the window recently?"

"I agree with Steve," Bruce said quietly. "We are better off with him off planet." He met the Director's gaze. "I also think we're better off with the Tesseract off planet. Pretty sure it's safe to say it's caused a _lot _more trouble than it's worth."

A small sound like a laugh escaped Fury. "I can't argue there, Dr. Banner." He glanced around at his team and sighed. "Fine." He stood up. "Let's send the aliens back to Asgard, then."

They filed from the room, and Steve nodded at Thor, who smiled in relief. The seven of them wended their way down to Loki's cell. Fury looked dispassionately at first at the defeated god's slumped posture, but his eyebrows rose as Steve and Thor worked together to get him up and somewhat comfortably arranged in his brother's arms. Thor paused at Fury's gesture as he exited the cell, and the Director lifted the Trickster's hand back up to his middle, curling the strangely stiff fingers into a loose fist.

"Thankyou," Thor said softly.

Fury shook his head, only muttering "weird" under his breath before leading the way out of the building and to the park.

Steve again helped in the ordeal to get Loki into a stable standing position, with one hand chained to the Tesseract. Thor grasped his other hand tightly, smiled at his friends one last time, then activated the Tesseract. Both of them disappeared in a blur of blue.

**Author's note: catatonia is kinda cool, by which I mean interesting, not good. "Waxy catatonia" isn't actually that common anymore, but it's certainly the most dramatic. What I've described isn't even a true catatonia, since the non-blinking is not actually a thing. Real catatonia as far as I know is an imbalance of the emotional and motivational pathways in the brain, classically due to chemical imbalance in psychiatric disorders; the main alternative is truly end-stage dementia, where most of the cortex is just gone, defunct, but I don't think dementia can produce the waxy kind (I may be mistaken there). Real catatonia notably has a normal sleep-wake cycle, and my version doesn't. What exactly is causing it here, well... The same deconstruction of consciousness we started with in the first chapter, obviously, plus whatever latent effects of Thanos' experimenting. AKA technobabble. I'm ****_not _****going for the "Loki now has schizophrenia" angle, hence the not-actually-real-catatonia.**

**Also philosophy of death, which is always an interesting topic. Thor is basically recognizing Loki's condition as similar to an end-stage dementia (one of the few organic afflictions still present to a degree in Asgard), not as a reversible psychiatric problem. I let the humans argue for the strictest medical definition of death, because they're all smart people who know something of the impressive power of modern medicine. Death, being the ultimate unknown, is a huge philosophical question, and not just because of the theological side (afterlife versus oblivion) but also the problem of pinpointing when death happens, particularly in the face of ever-more-sophisticated medicine. I figure an advanced alien civilization with tech that looks like magic and nearly immortal people probably has had a lot more time to come up with a satisfactory answer to the question, as well as better diagnostic technology. I probably didn't do it justice though.**


	5. Emergency

"The Midgardians thought it was what they call catatonia, perhaps due to shock," Thor ventured as Queen Frigga and Lady Eir studied the data projecting from the healing stone that was currently resting on Loki's forehead. They had already concluded he was well-healed in body, therefore the injury must lie solely in the mind.

"Catatonia is just a term for a stupor stemming from disordered consciousness rather than from the microanatomical substrate," Eir snapped. "They were right in a way, but it's a symptom, not a diagnosis. What could have _caused _this?"

"Could not trauma do it? He would have been hit hard by my friend the Hulk."

"No. There are no signs that he sustained significant injury from the battle, and, well, that just does not cause this."

"I still don't understand what is wrong with him_," _Thor protested weakly. "He is empty, as if dead."

"I do not know what has happened either, Thor. You may well be right, but these readings suggest otherwise. It appears he should have the capability of consciousness, he just isn't, or not to any detectable degree. Essentially, he has lost the ability to respond to or even achieve awareness of external stimuli."

"He can't hear us then?" Odin finally spoke.

"No, but it's not just that, my king. According to this, he's also not generating any spontaneous internal stimulus, either. The absolute levels of all chemical neuromediators are very low, some almost undetectable. This goes beyond anything like battlefield shock which _could_ look similar. Your friends were correct about that much, but you are more correct, Thor. His mind is not _active_ and therefore for all intents and purposes appears dead. But it is not a biotic coma either, or I wouldn't be able to do this." She picked up his hand, and it stayed hovering about a foot off the bed. She gestured to Frigga and pointed to a crooked line of shimmering gold. "Look, there's the activity in the sensory and motor cortices needed to keep the arm there. But that's the only durable cortical activity going on. It's like each position we set him in is just another self-sustaining feedback loop. There's nothing plainly voluntary. Sounds, sights, sensations...the signals are all getting where they're supposed to go, but they don't travel any further. The only area with near-normal function is the most primitive part of the brain near the base, responsible for vital functions and reflexes, that sort of thing. Beyond that, the areas with somewhat regular activity are just the primary motor area, and to a lesser degree the sensory areas, and either are only active when _we_ do something to cause it. Everything else, all the hierarchical processing and relay parts of the brain, everything that _needs _to function in order to produce consciousness... that is quiescent." She nudged his arm back down and bit her lip. "In all my years as a healer, I have never seen this before. I have never _heard _of this before. I have no idea what _could _do this. I am sorry, your majesties, but I don't know what to do for him."

They all stared at Loki for a few minutes. It was Thor who broke the silence. "I tried to get him to drink when we were still on Midgard. According to my friend Clint Bartonson, who was bewitched by the jewel Loki carried for a time, he did not take any sustenance the entire time he was with him either. If we don't do something, he will surely die, and quickly."

"I can easily sustain his bodily functions, Thor. That isn't the problem. I just have no way of restoring his mind."

"What jewel was this, Thor?" Frigga asked.

Thor shrugged. "I know not. It was a blue stone contained in the scepter that Loki carried. Apparently he had it when he first appeared on Midgard. It exerted a sinister emotional influence on anyone in proximity to it, and Loki was able to take control of people's minds with a bare touch of the thing, according to Clint, though Anthony stated the effect was negated by the engine embedded in his chest..."

Frigga glanced at Odin quizzically, and they both shrugged. "Mind magic can do some curious things, and it certainly sounds like the stone you saw was some sort of mind-based magical device, but... well, I've never heard of any magic that could do this either. Redirect a living mind yes. Strafe a mind to the point of dementia or so that _nothing _is left...yes...

"But not quite like this," Eir finished in a tone of utter frustration. "And there is certainly no spell remaining for me to break. That would be obvious. If this is the result of some obscure mind magic, I still don't know how to diagnose and reverse it."

"Perhaps Loki would know. It was his field of expertise," Odin said with bitter irony. He shook his head and looked to Eir. "Madame healer, if this was a usual catatonia or coma, understanding that it is not, but if it were... from one of the known causes, what might you do to treat it?"

Eir pursed her lips. "The treatment depends entirely on the cause, my king. There are a number of potions and spells I could _try_, but I doubt any of them will be effective except by happenstance, because they are all directed at the specific causes. And I am quite certain that I would know if something like bilgesnipe envenomation was at work, for instance. Any more generalized techniques, well, they tend to be dangerous. Healing is more specific and more sophisticated now than it used to be for a reason."

Odin smiled sadly. "He is my son. I have thought him dead for a year. I do not want to give up on him when he is so newly returned to us. Please, support his body and try whatever treatments you think of, no matter how useless you predict them to be." Frigga took his hand, and Thor's.

"As my lord commands."

**Author's note: A chapter about the difficulty of producing consciousness as an emergent property of an inanimate gray blob inside a skull. "Emergence" is the philosophical term for a property of a whole not present in the parts (see Wikipedia).**

**From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "****The _How_ question focuses on explanation rather than description. It asks us to explain the basic status of consciousness and its place in nature. Is it a fundamental feature of reality in its own right, or does its existence depend upon other nonconscious items, be they physical, biological, neural or computational? And if the latter, can we explain or understand how the relevant nonconscious items could cause or realize consciousness? Put simply, can we explain how to make something conscious out of things that are not conscious?"**

**In the philosophy of consciousness, there is a certain hierarchy of sentience, wakefulness, and the more recursive consciousness states. Neuroscience has a similar hierarchy of brain function, ranging from brain-dead on one extreme to fully conscious on the other, with "coma," "vegetative state," "minimally conscious," as well as delirium somewhere in between, depending on how much of the brain is functioning. The confusing thing for Eir of course is that while Loki may at this point fit in to some part of the philosophical hierarchy of consciousness, the disorder in his brain does not easily fit into one of the old neuroscience buckets, even granted the elevation of science/magic on Asgard. In order to measure Loki's consciousness, she would have to have a measure of his subjective experience, which I am not giving her the power to do, even with Asgardian tech. If you refer back to the reference above, I am treating consciousness as a "fundamental feature" of my version of the Marvel Universe, because otherwise Loki's mind would not have survived my version of the Void.**


	6. The Stranger

In time now immemorial, Thanos, the Mad Titan, last of a nigh-forgotten race, penetrated the asteroid fields of the Chitauri, slaughtered half of the inhabitants single-handedly, and claimed the remainder as his serfs and their home as his Sanctuary. The Other no longer remembered the name he bore back then, but he fervently remembered his first encounter with the Titan. The Titan was the largest living being he had ever seen, his purple skin shaded to black with dark Chitauri blood. He was practically invisible to the naked eye in the jagged shadows of the asteroids, except in the lower-frequency spectrum of his body heat. That said, compared to the average cold-blooded Chitaurun, Thanos burned with inner light. This was a devouring fire that could and would consume them all if provoked. This was the being that had brought death to so many of his people. This was a being the likes of which the Chitauri had never encountered before. To Thanos, all the Chitauri were children, Imps. The survivors could do nought but kneel before his might.

The Chitauri were always a people of xenophobes, their culture given to marauding and filled with hate for anything "other." They had well over a hundred ways to describe that hate, in fact. Thanos was different, being the last of an alien kind, not its ambassador. To the Chitauri, Thanos was himself a god of destruction, and therefore worshipful. Thanos was death incarnate, the Inevitable One, a Messiah whose quest for power and genocide matched the Chitauri ideals as detailed in their sacraments perfectly. In the fullness of time, Thanos supplanted the old gods of the Chitauri. He _was_ their one true god. Indeed, the Chitauri called him Bator, which means "The One."

In awe of The One, the Other took on his new name. He became that which was most despised, the dark echo of his god. As Thanos' power grew, the Other likewise grew into the role of vizier, issuing commands and meting out punishment in his lord's name. The Other had served the Mad Titan for a millennium. He remained devoted as ever to his god. He also remained fully aware that all his efforts to follow Thanos' magnificent example remained in vain. He would always be an inadequate shadow. Thanos was annihilation, and the Other was wasting. Thanos was cleansing fire, and the Other was senseless torment. Thanos was unique, and the Other was merely different. He remained useful to the Titan, but that was his only value to Thanos.

His god did not love him as he loved his newer, more favored servants, the ones he called his "children."

Thanos' six children had finally returned home to Sanctuary, to regroup in the wake of the disastrous invasion of Terra. As always, the children's arrival brought both pride and trepidation for the Other. He was afraid of the weapons he had wrought over the years. But he continued to make them in obeisance to his lord.

There were Thanos' three strong sons, Corvus, Cull, and Ebony. The one-time captives who had chosen the Titan as their lord and father. He had found and fought and defeated each of his sons in the early days of his quest. Then, Thanos had been a lonely warrior with only the Other and his Chitauri for help. At first, Thanos only rarely took captives on his frequent genocidal forays. He only saved those who were the strongest in their resistance, the ones who showed their mettle. Each of his sons had hated him in the beginning, but once he gave them over to the Other for breaking, there had grown a mutual admiration that finally blossomed into fierce loyalty for the father. Corvus was the first, and his bright spirit had been the hardest for the Other to break. The Other had worked on him for months, maybe years, in the darkness of Sanctuary before his victim had learned not to beg for reprieve: that, of course, was when Thanos finally granted that unspoken wish and raised his son out of the darkness and into his loving embrace. It was a moment of triumph for them both that the Other had never forgotten. Next came Ebony, and then Cull, their breaking much easier for the practice. Both were unique and beloved by the Titan in their own right, though neither had quite surpassed their brother in Thanos' eyes.

Then there was determined Proxima, daughter-by-marriage, bride of Corvus. She had first come to Sanctuary to rescue her captured lover, fighting her way past Cull and Ebony to reach the eldest brother. When Corvus then refused to be rescued, she submitted herself to the breaking willingly for his love; her strength in love and now in loyalty was astonishing as a result. Though Thanos sometimes dismissed her, she was the Other's favorite.

There were the Titan's other two beautiful daughters, his treasures, Nebula and Gamora, who he loved even more than Corvus. The Other remembered when he first met them, the children Thanos had chosen. It had been hard to hate them, despite the Chitauri creed. Gamora had been a starveling child of no more than six tender years, her green face grimy with the smoke of a dying world and streaked with tears. Nebula had been even younger, both abandoned by an overburdened population until Thanos found them. He had saved them from want and need, adopted them, trained them, burnished them to brightness. They were sworn to his purpose just like their older siblings, though young as they were, the Other had only been needed to correct their errors over the years, not remake them entirely. Now both rival sisters were strong and proud and wanted for nothing. They were Thanos' clear symbols of the righteousness of his cause.

Six children of Thanos, accomplished and deadly. The Other shrank as he watched Thanos greet and take unconscious comfort in them in the wake of losing his other almost-child, the Puppet. Or the Gift as Thanos had often called it, borne to him by dark Lady Death herself. The Other was an outsider to the family now, he realized, his presence not nearly so pleasurable, more disappointing.

"Your failure was costly," Corvus said as soon as he sat down, glaring at the Other. He was always keen to magnify the Other's defeat, ever since he had first graduated from the Other's brutal aegis.

For all his failures, the Other was effective, he reminded himself firmly. His was the labor that molded Thanos' children. Likewise, his was the labor that birthed the Puppet... but his had also been the errors that lost it forever. And lost Thanos the Mind Stone. Utter defeat spat out of the jaws of victory. The Other was not just a disappointment but an embarrassment and a stain on their glorious purpose.

He was losing his touch. If Thanos chose to spare him, he did not deserve it.

"Do not mourn," Ebony murmured. "It is in the nature of Death's gifts to be short-lived. She always takes them back." He grinned wickedly at the jest, and grinned all the wider as Thanos himself chuckled. "No, my friends. We should rejoice. We have the locations of four of the six stones. We have knowledge now of how they may be used. And this knowledge comes at the best possible time, for the Invisible Network is in flux. The phenomenon the Aesir call the Convergence will be upon us in less than a year, something we would not have predicted without the Lady's gift. When the Convergence is upon us, we can listen for the other stones as was impossible before and retrieve them in a day."

"_We _can?" Gamora asked dubiously.

"Your point is made. _I _can listen. _You _can retrieve," Ebony said smoothly.

"This is all news to me," Cull rumbled. He had been the last to return, arriving only hours before from a vicious raid in the Invisible Network. He had returned with three promising captives, a hundred stolen high-power weapons of various types, a death tally of several hundred enemy soldiers and civilians, and the welcome news that a war might now be brewing again between the Kree Empire and the Nova Corp of Xandar.

"You met the Puppet before you left, yes?" Proxima said impatiently. "It was sent to retrieve the Tesseract from Terra. The mission failed."

"It was mishandled," Corvus broke in.

"But we gained new intelligence from it before the connection was lost," Proxima continued.

"In addition to what we learned before it left here," Nebula added. She was still a little smug as the discoverer of the Puppet in the first place.

"We already knew of three stones, and had one," Cull said, unimpressed.

"Yes, the Puppet sensed the fourth on Terra but did nothing to retrieve it because it had no instruction to do so. We have confirmed the Mind Stone remains on Terra as well, so we can retrieve both at once when the time comes," Proxima said.

"And the Asgardian knew the method needed to retrieve the Soul Stone, so that can now be accomplished at our leisure... once we have the proper... accoutrements," Ebony finished vaguely.

The way Ebony eyed Corvus and Proxima with his last statement was not lost on the Other.

"Mmm... my children are so clever. You will be busy, Imp," Thanos rumbled.

"My lord?" The Other said, cautiously.

"You will have to share the knowledge you have gained from our Puppet with my children. You will need to work closely with Ebony so that when the time is right, we are prepared to handle each stone with all their peculiar dangers until they are united in my hand. You will open your mind to Ebony. He will share your experience with the Mind Stone and any relevant Asgardian lore of the other stones with the rest of my children, and with me." The Other visibly wilted under that pronouncement. The only one who appeared happy with the arrangement was Ebony Maw, in fact. Telepathy was only a pleasant experience for those with an inborn talent for it, after all.

"As my lord wills," came the reluctant reply.

"So mote it be," Ebony crooned as he slunk up behind the Other, pulled back his cowl, and wrapped long hands around his bony temples. The Other let loose a gasp of pain as dark magic flooded his mind, a potent scourge that scraped up memory and knowledge and speculation alike. He knew it lasted only a second, but it felt far, far longer.

"Interesting," Ebony said behind him, warm breath searing the back of his neck. A much gentler whisper of magic darted from Ebony to each of his siblings and to the Titan, sharing the Other's stolen thoughts.

"Again." The pain flooded in, and once more receded, taking with it another vast store of thoughts... not reading them but _taking, _he realized. With each touch of Ebony's dark magic on his mind, he would grow less. He could be dead within a matter of hours if Ebony was not careful. The Other met the eyes of his master. Thanos' expression was impassive, but all the Children of Thanos wore tight smiles as they watched Ebony caress his scalp. He recognized it then. The wheel had truly turned against him. The Children of Thanos were ascendant, and the Other was fallen. It was only right, he told himself. The young should replace the old. It was _balance_, that which was most sacred to the Black Order, to Thanos... He had been merciless in forging the Children of Thanos into the weapons of righteous war they were today. Now they had their revenge in stripping him down. He ignored the children, focusing on the father, The One, his One.

"Again," Ebony said, and the merciless pain returned.

"Again."

**Author's Note: Plot plot. As I said, everything that happens is fallout from Loki's time in the Void. The plot will diverge significantly from canon. In case you are wondering, I took the Name "Bator" from the Basque word for "one," because the Basque language is so different from any other language. Just trivia.**

**Also, the title "The Stranger" is a reference to the eponymous Albert Camus novel. It's not entirely relevant, but the lack of empathy for others from the main character is certainly duplicated in the Chitauri and the Other's world view. Per the Sparknotes summary, "****_The Stranger_, Camus's first novel, is both a brilliantly crafted story and an illustration of Camus's absurdist world view. Published in 1942, the novel tells the story of an emotionally detached, amoral young man named Meursault. He does not cry at his mother's funeral, does not believe in God, and kills a man he barely knows without any discernible motive. For his crime, Meursault is deemed a threat to society and sentenced to death. When he comes to accept the 'gentle indifference of the world,' he finds peace with himself and with the society that persecutes him."**

**Updates will be sporadic, due to the current pandemic... If you're antsy waiting, or bored in quarantine, you can always leave a review to egg me on, then maybe check out my other Loki fics. There are several...**


	7. Extra Ordinary

"It has been days, Madame healer," Thor ventured. "Is there any change?"

"No, my prince. Your brother fares the same."

...

Tony Stark leaned back in the computer chair, tension easing out of him with each articular "pop" in his spine. It had been a long day. He (along with two cranes, five humongous dump trucks, a very impressive industrial saw, and a small army of only partially constructed remote-controlled Iron Suits) had finally hauled the vast wreckage of the Hulk-smashed Chitauri leviathan off the streets of Manhattan. It was a job well-done, and Tony was glad he was finally going to be moving on to a purely supervisory role in the cleanup. Actual work was terrible.

He sat forward, twisted side-to-side with another satisfying lower back crack, and reached for the bottle of bourbon he had brought down to the lab with him. He poured a healthy measure, then booted up the computer. He had been spending the evenings working on a kind of hive-mind AI program that could coordinate spare Iron Suits without his needing to actually be there joining in. The idea had merit even beyond the current cleanup crisis, Tony had decided. The suits could be deployed for all kinds of humanitarian situations where sending humans posed undue risk. They could also be used destructively by evil governments and corporations, but Tony had already decided to thwart that risk by furiously encrypting and never, ever, ever sharing the code and making sure it was only compatible with his suits anyways.

It was still a risk, and maybe he would never put it in action, but it was a fun project to tinker with. Most of the time. This evening he was battling an encroaching migraine, and the eye strain staring at any kind of computer screen was not helping. He closed the program. He poured another shot of bourbon and grinned wryly as he downed it. That probably wouldn't help his headache either. He yawned. "Jarvis, turn the lights down."

Absently, he spun around in his swivel chair, immediately regretting it when his head started pounding. He planted his feet to stop the spinning and found himself staring straight at Loki's scepter, still resting on the workbench where he had set it after the battle. Its blue glow was quite striking in the dim light. He reached behind him to push off the desk, rolling across the room to take a closer look as his curiosity sparked. He picked up the scepter, peering at the apparatus surrounding the central stone. It looked a lot more delicate and deliberate up close, more like a machine than mere decoration. Which made sense, since the scepter was clearly a tool, not just a fancy stick. He ran a finger around the edge of the stone and felt a soft click. A giddy shiver ran down his spine as the color of the light shifted from sapphire to teal. "Jarvis, turn the lights back on," he said excitedly.

Tony set the scepter back down, then shoved all the other doodads cluttering the bench aside. He grabbed a sheaf of drafting paper, a #2 pencil, a compass, and a straightedge from the desk and started measuring. If the scepter was a machine, he could figure out how it worked. If he could figure out how cool alien tech worked (and honestly, the scepter was much cooler than most of the random Chitauri junk he had already poked at), then who knew what new toys he could invent?

...

"Erik?" Dr. Jane Foster ventured quietly from the door. She had been invited to the psych ward by some government agent to help determine whether any of her mentor's ramblings were something more than insanity...which was looking doubtful. Her longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Selvig, was sitting on the floor of his hospital room in a set of paper shirt and trousers, staring avidly at the buttons on the remote control for his television. The television was off. He looked up at her.

"Jane! So good to see you! You're just the person I needed. Come look at this..." With some trepidation, Jane stepped forward. She was only mildly reassured when he set down the TV remote and instead grabbed a sheaf of loose-leaf papers with complex equations scrawled haphazardly across them in purple crayon. She recognized some of them as pertaining to the work they had been doing in New Mexico on Einstein-Rosen Bridges, before Selvig had taken an academic leave for a government job that landed him in the middle of a disaster.

"Erik, what happened?"

"Hmm? Oh, didn't they tell you? I think was in the news, actually, or maybe it's hush? Anyways, Thor's evil brother Loki showed up at my jobsite with some mind-control device. I had to help him open an artificial bridge between Earth and some really distant asteroid field. I've been trying to compute where. I think it's somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse... I'm also not entirely sure how I did it, or even _if _I did it or it was all _him_, so I've been trying to work backwards on that as well, and I could really use your help!"

"He controlled your mind, did he? Isn't that magic? I thought you didn't believe in magic."

"Yes! It was awful! He's not human." Selvig said that matter-of-factly, not in anger, which was very confusing for Jane.

"Well, no. If he's Thor's brother, he's Asgardian."

"No, I mean he wasn't _human_. Thor might be an alien, but he's still basically a normal person."

"I know what he means," came a soft voice from the door. The SHIELD agent was still standing there, watching. He met Jane's eyes. "Loki controlled me too, for a time. It's hard to describe, _magic _if you believe the Avengers." He smiled bitterly. "Selvig's right, though. The touch of Loki's mind, if that's what it was, it didn't feel right. It was like communing with a robot."

"A really intelligent robot," Erik agreed sagely. "One that never learned Asimov's laws. Or if it did, learned ones that didn't apply to 'humans.'" He patted her hand, smiling reassuringly. "It's ok, Jane. I'm fine now. There's nothing more comforting than the knowledge that the universe is far crazier than you are. What was it that Thor said, that advanced science looks like magic? That's the assumption I'm going with for now. Now, help me figure out how to build a magical bridge to outer space. Then maybe you can visit Thor rather than have to wait for him. He's been really unreliable, hasn't he? Also..." he paused in his tirade long enough to pick up the TV remote again and show it to her. "I was taking a break from the main project when you first came in, and I trying to decide whether this might be intelligent. I mean, I tell it what to do, and it does it. It even seems to remember some things, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't like it when I touch that button, or at least the nurses here don't. I mean, it's basically the same as I was under mind-control, and I am intelligent, so... What do you think?"

**Author's note: humans don't just ignore cool stuff, and Selvig has had his frame of reference severely skewed. Also contains an admittedly lame and tangential discussion of the definition of a robot: a machine programmed to fulfill (complex) automatic functions.**

**For reference, Asimov's 3 laws of robotics are**

**1\. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.**

**2\. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.**

**3\. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.**


	8. Faith

"The moons have waxed to full," Frigga observed with some surprise as she glanced out Loki's window. "They were barely past new when my sons first came home. Strange, the time seems both longer and shorter than that." She turned to the bed, smoothing Loki's black hair. "Is there any change?"

"None, my queen."

"There will be."

"I hope you are right"

...

"Hear me and rejoice," a voice behind him whispered. The Other was mildly startled; he had not remembered anyone was in the room besides himself and... the one he loved. He gazed up at the familiar, stern features, the strong and resolute shoulders, the weathered but ageless skin.

"You have had the privilege of being saved by the great Thanos," the voice continued. The Other was grateful; he had forgotten the name of Thanos for a moment. The one he loved was named Thanos. Thanos. Thanos. Thanos. Thanos had other names too, but he did not remember what they were... and it was not important.

"You may think this is suffering. No. It is salvation." There was an unidentifiable sensation in his head that he thought was probably unpleasant, but it was hard to focus on, and he certainly was not suffering. It was impossible to suffer in the presence of... the one he loved. He had forgotten the name again.

"The universal scale tips towards balance because of your sacrifice. Smile. For even in death, you have become a child of Thanos." The Other smiled. Being a Child of Thanos was something he had always wanted, he felt sure, although he could not recall who Thanos was. He gazed adoringly at the face of the one he loved, who was sitting utterly still and watching him. The Other opened his mouth to speak, to tell the one he loved how much he was loved and admired and worshiped... but no words came. He could not remember how to form the words. Or what the words might have been for the bond he felt with The One.

The One was the world the Other defined itself by. The One was a monumental physical presence, and indestructible, the Other was quite certain. The One was immortal. The One had a vision and the will and mind to execute it. The Other... had a body. In that way, it was the same as the One. But the Other perceived itself as old and frail and finite in comparison to The One. The only worthy quality the Other knew it possessed was love and reverence for the One.

The mind of the Other was so wasted and spent, it lacked the recursive ability to reflect on its own qualities with any more sophistication.

Without The One, the Other could not imagine its own existence. The Other was contingent on the One.

The One stepped forward and touched the Other's face. "I release you from my service," he said softly. Then another figure stepped from behind him, common green beside his royal purple. The Other did not know her, but she smiled brightly as she set a cold, thin, sharp piece of metal to his neck.

There was pain then. The Other recognized it for what it was, thought he did not understand what it meant or why it was happening. Then there was nothing.

...

"It has been weeks, Madame healer," the Allfather rumbled, gazing at the pale form of his younger son, still unmoving in his bed in the healing chambers except for the steady rise and fall of his chest. He looked frailer than he had. "Is there any change?"

"Nothing good, my king."

"Is there anything else we might do?"

"Your majesty, I have tried every medicine and every spell I could think of. None of the standard therapies have helped."

"And the _non_-standard?"

"Have also proved ineffective, and dangerous. If you'll recall, I believe the problem to be chemical and electrical, not traumatic or architectural, but the ancient medicinal therapies have done nothing. The sedatives historically used as a chemical reset in similar cases induced a true, profound coma that would have killed him without artificial respiratory support, and he is no better for it. I tried going the opposite route, using potions to boost the levels of stimulating chemicals in his brain. That was even worse. I had to use such high doses to get any measurable change in the levels in the nervous system, I effectively poisoned his body. There was significant muscle damage which indirectly threatens his vital organs. The fevers only subsided yesterday. I cannot try that again." She sighed in frustration. "The _only_ things left are true quackery or carry inherent and innately uncontrollable risk."

"My lady," Odin said gently but with a hint of irony in his tone. "What risk are you still anticipating? How are you imagining his condition could worsen?"

Eir raised one eyebrow. "You make a good point, Allfather," she admitted.

"I am called the God of Wisdom for a reason, Madame healer."

"Very well. But I would rather wait awhile longer still. In more conventional injuries, I would wait at least a month before declaring lack of spontaneous improvement a true sign of poor prognosis. Two more weeks."

"I bow to your expertise... what will you try next, though?"

Eir smiled mirthlessly. "It is well you ask. The options are limited, and the most promising venture into the realms of dark magic on one extreme to some barbaric Midgardian treatments on the other. Of the options to hand... I would rather go with the Midgardian approach and, as they would have it, 'jumpstart' the brain. With a seizure."

Odin's one eye widened. "I see what you mean by 'uncontrollable risk.'"

"I would not deceive you, my king. On the plus side, I think the approach might help Thor, even if it does not help Loki."

"Why?"

"Because I would rather use electricity to do it than more poisons, and Thor happens to be the most convenient way I can think of to generate the voltage I will need. I don't predict the standard Midgardian equipment would work, after all. Not on your son. Regardless, it may help Thor to feel he is doing something besides watching his brother die."

**Author's note: mostly plot, but there's a little bit of science:**** In demented states (what is happening to the Other through Ebony's ransacking of his mind), the various parts of the memory and cognition are not lost all at once. Classic Alzheimers dementia starts with recent memory loss, whereas some dementias start with language loss, and some start with movement disorders. They all end up in roughly the same place of every system dysfunctioning, but certain parts of the mind can be remarkably preserved until the end. In the Other's case, his buried emotional and religious connection to Thanos remains intact, even when he's lost all of the contextual memories. My grandmother with dementia was like that: she apparently was talking to my other grandmother about me and could not remember my name but called me "the one who we both love."**

**Also, a play on the idea that contrast with "the other" is a major way that people define their own identities, identity philosophically being the same as one-ness.**

**As for what the heck Eir has been doing all this time, benzodiazepine medications are sedating, but they are counterintuitively the usual treatment for catatonia, apparently. Presumably because real catatonia involves an overactivation of some area of the brain (the parts that don't work well in psychosis), not just depressed activity as happens in a more typical coma. Don't quote me on that. Additionally, several, actually most, of the neurotransmitters involved in consciousness act as poisons in high doses, both in the brain and in the body. That's why an overdose of various psychiatric medications (and drugs of abuse) can be so dangerous.**


	9. Mind over Matter

Tony was the only one of the Avengers in New York City when Thor reappeared without warning in the middle of a construction site. He had been engaged in one of his infrequent personal inspections of the Stark Industries-funded rebuilding projects and was not at all anticipating the God of Thunder when he looked up from the blueprints he had been studying.

"Point Break! Long time no see! Nice of you to stop by!" Tony said brightly to cover his shock. Then, voice suddenly much flatter and more cautious, "What's up?"

"It is good to see you, Anthony," Thor said. He looked and sounded tired.

"Uh... what are you doing here? Not that... It _is _good to see you, Thor." He glanced around at the various workers and managers now giving them strange looks. "Let's go to the Tower to chat, eh?"

Thor shrugged but nodded. "I will meet you there," he said, and vanished.

Startled, Tony stayed frozen for a few moments, until Jarvis' helpfully announced, "Sir, I am detecting unusual energy levels on the balcony of the penthouse in Stark Tower."

"Since when can he teleport?" Tony complained, then summoned an Iron Suit and as soon as it arrived took off towards the tower, alighting beside Thor minutes later. They walked in silence into the penthouse, Tony absently wending the way towards the parlor with its waiting bar. He wanted a drink. He had time to curse his foolishness though when Thor froze in the threshold, staring at the yet-to-be repaired pit in the floor. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew why Thor was back. He moved to take his friend's arm to guide him to the bar, but his hand passed right through Thor's bicep.

"What the hell?"

"I am not here in body, Anthony."

"You're a _hologram?"_

"What you see is an astral projection. I borrowed Munin with my father's leave."

"That...doesn't actually help."

"Munin is the raven of mind and enables his masters to cast the mind even between the worlds, and even for those without any underlying magical ability."

"So you're a magic hologram."

Thor smiled briefly. "I am not sure what that word means, but yes, probably. An astral projection links two minds. What you see is a combination of my impression of myself and your memory of me."

"Crap. So you're a magic hallucination. Am I going to go insane? Please don't drive me insane without my permission, Thor."

"It is not a hallucination," Thor said soothingly. "Though I suppose it might appear that way to others. It is a harmless magic though."

Tony didn't say anything, realizing now why the foreman and others at the construction site had been staring. They weren't staring at Thor. They were staring at him gabbing away at the air.

"My mother and Loki could do the same even without the aid of Munin," Thor offered awkwardly.

"Magic is so unfair," Tony concluded, and poured himself a shot of whiskey. He gestured to Thor. "I'd offer you a drink, but..."

Without missing a beat, Thor reached to the side, a flask appearing in his hand...just like magic. He poured a large measure of whatever-it-was into what could only be described as a chalice, which had also, _magically_, appeared in his other hand.

"How's Loki?" Tony finally asked.

"Terrible," Thor said shortly and downed his drink in one enormous gulp. Tony raised his eyebrows. "Everything we have tried has failed," Thor continued. "We _have_ successfully poisoned him a couple times. And yesterday, I stopped his heart. Briefly." He shuddered.

"...I don't know what to say."

Thor shrugged. "You don't need to say anything."

"I'm sorry," Tony offered, and meant it. "I gotta ask though, why and how did you stop his heart?"

Thor smiled thinly. "We were trying a Midgardian technique. It was supposed to cause a seizure, and that was supposed to help, somehow." He raised his hands and stared at them, looking faintly disgusted. "I placed a hand on each side of his head," Thor continue softly. "I summoned the storm. Gently. I did not want to hurt him. But gentle power was not enough, apparently. Lady Eir - she is our finest healer - she told me to use more. And I did. And it was not enough. So I had to use more, and more. It still was somehow not enough to induce the seizure we needed, but it certainly caused contraction of the muscles, and burns. That's when his heart stopped. Only for a moment before Eir was able to fix it, but still... I killed my own brother, temporarily. It was awful."

"Wow." It was the only thing Tony could think to say at the moment.

Thor looked up at him. "She wants to try it again, in a few days or a week. That's why I'm here, to gather more current information about your hearlers' methods. So we can address whatever mistakes we made."

"_Again?_ Oh, man... that sucks."

Thor grimaced. "We have to try."

"Oh." Only then did Tony realize how serious Loki's condition must be. He had not really given much thought to Thor or his mad brother since the two left, concentrating instead on the rebuilding efforts. Deep down, Tony had secretly assumed Thor was being melodramatic and Loki would bounce back fairly quickly... "You know, I actually read about electroconvulsive therapy - that's what we call it - back before you left and we were still trying to figure out what happened. Shouldn't take too long to find what you need."

"Thank you, Anthony."

"Did you figure out what happened to him?"

Thor sighed. "Not really. It clearly has nothing to do with the battle. Our best guess is some effect from the jewel in his scepter. I would also like to examine the jewel if I may while I'm here, see if it holds any clues."

"I have the whole scepter here still, that's no problem. But I have to ask, why would he put a dead man's switch in his own... oh."

"Loki was lost to the Void a full year before arriving here," Thor said him softly. He had said something like that before as well, and the Avengers had not listened. "I had never seen that scepter before. It was not his originally. Nor would the Chitauri have been his natural allies."

"Who gave it to him then?"

"We do not know."

"But it is vitally important you find out. Yeah. I get it. Ok, I'll get Jarvis to hunt up everything he can find about how to electrocute your brother safely, and you and I can go to the lab. Jarvis?"

"I take it Mr. Odinson is communicating with you using an energy beyond my programming to interpret?"

"Yes."

"Then I shall cancel the call to your therapist, Sir, and conduct the necessary literature review."

"Gee, thanks," Tony said, rolling his eyes. "Let's go, Thor."

...

"This...looks different," Thor said after several long minutes peering at the stone and its half-deconstructed scepter.

"Well, yeah. I've been studying it. Turns out the handle part was really just a handle, not wired to the main device at all. It's over there." He gestured vaguely to another table behind them. "Don't worry, I have all the diagrams. It's mostly still intact though. It took me forever to remove the casing. I'm pretty sure all the mechanisms are still in the original configuration and theoretically should still work, if we knew how to use it."

Thor looked over at him with raised eyebrows. "You are a brave man, Anthony."

"Thanks! I am?"

Thor smiled wryly. "I would have hesitated to study this device as you have been, knowing how Loki used it on Hawkeye, and knowing Loki's state now."

"Ah. That's a good point. To be fair, I was very drunk when I started working on it."

"Then I must congratulate you even further to have successfully avoided serious injury while drunkenly meddling with powers unknown."

"Thanks again!"

"You are welcome," Thor laughed, then turned back to the stone. "It is completely inactive," he said after awhile.

"You sound disappointed. And after your warnings of 'powers unknown.' Here I thought you were worried about me."

"I was worried for you, Anthony. But I _am _disappointed. We had presumed this device was truly responsible for my brother's state, but it is hard to believe that with no residual spell activity to _keep _him as he is."

"It wouldn't be a one-time dead man's switch?"

"Well, it still could, but then our hopes of reversing it are much lower. I was half hoping to simply come down here and be able to turn it off."

"Oh."

"I do think I have seen something like this before, though. All these circuits with the stone as a central relay. It's familiar. I do not recall where... Mother might know."

"It just put me in mind of ridiculously complicated motherboard. You going to have Mom join the call?"

"What? Oh, no. I will share the memory with her later." He turned away from the stone with a sigh. "I don't think that stone is the culprit. This probably goes back further than we thought."

"What do you mean? Like, whoever gave it to him?"

"Perhaps, but I am more afeared of what might have happened to Loki before he was found." At Tony's questioning look, the god explained, "If you recall what I told you of my recent banishment to the part of Midgard you call New Mexico, that was the time Loki was lost to the Void. I fought with him as soon as I returned to Asgard, and he fell from the Bifrost. Norns only know what might have happened then. I have never heard of one surviving the Void unshielded as he apparently did.

"You do realize I have no idea what you're talking about with this 'Void' thing though, right?"

Thor smiled. "Sorry. It is hard to explain."

"Try me?"

An hour and five drinks later, Tony was still confused and getting frustrated. "Ok, sorry, just one more time. Your rainbow Bifrost thingy is actually a high-tech energy device that projects a bubble of dimensional space through _wormholes_?"

"Yes."

"Wow," Tony said, and hiccoughed loudly. He had to open another bottle of whiskey to wrap his mind around what Thor was telling him. "Ok... and Loki fell off the bubble... so he fell out of dimensional space?"

"Yes." Thor downed the rest of his own drink. His nose was also becoming distinctly red. Maybe he should get the Rudolph nickname.

_"How is he still_ _alive?!_" Tony shouted.

"I don't know," Thor slurred patiently. "Remember we think he might not be."

"Yeah, yeah, but I mean, god! Thor. It doesn't make sense for his body to show up, dead or alive, if he literally fell out of spacetime."

Thor shrugged helplessly. "I am not a scholar. I cannot explain it. It is not quite so unbelievable as you think, though. Asgard has the technology to enable material to survive the Void. Most advanced civilizations do. There are a lot of ships traveling the Void, as a matter of fact, not just the Bifrost. The question remaining is how Loki might have survived without the usual shielding in place. I understand one of Loki's old friends at the Institute of Magic is devoting her time exclusively to unraveling the mathematics in this case, although I suspect her effort will remain futile as long as Loki remains as he is and unable to enlighten us."

"Damn," Tony muttered after a moment. "I didn't think I was this bad at physics."

**Author's note: Never fear, the plot will be moving along soon. In the meantime, I do appreciate your reviews :)**


	10. Meditations

_I am._

_I exist._

_I am thought._

_Change..._

_There is... otherness?_

_There is time._

After an eternity, or perhaps in an instant, for there was no way to tell, Loki began to perceive a cyclic changing that by its changing created a sense of time. He did not notice when it began, or if it began, or whether it had always been there, but he noticed it. It was brightening and then dimming, a _day_, and it happened whether he thought about it or not, which was how he knew it was something other than himself. Or at least, it was the reason he suspected it was something other than himself. It was entirely possible that the lightness and then darkness, the day, was an aspect of his thought that he had forgotten (not attended to) and was remembering. There was no way to confirm that there was or ever had been something other than his own thought.

Although he was left with the distinct impression of time and change, and that implied otherness. Unless the sense of change was an illusion of attention. If he did not attend to the light afterall, then it could, apparently, change to darkness in an instant.

He observed the light for days before arriving at the heady conclusion that it probably was external to himself.

_I am thought. There is light and dark. There is change. There is time._

_Was there anything else?_

That is when Loki's thought became more imaginative. The intensity of the light he knew changed so regularly, and so slowly, almost imperceptibly, which could be why he had not always been aware of it in the time before he was aware of time. He imagined variation in light. He imagined it waxing and waning frequently, irregularly. Light so bright it threatened thought. Light flashing and then guttering. The phantom strobe became too much, and, exhausted by the mental effort, Loki abandoned that thought and merely observed again. There was the day, brightening... and dimming. Reliable, dependable, comfortable.

_There is comfort, and discomfort_, it occurred to him after a full day of peaceful observation. _Comfort is good, and desirable._

_...There is desire. I have desire._

_I am thought. I have desire. There is light and dark. There is time. There is change._

_I desire comfort._

_I desire more than comfort. I desire change_.

He imagined flashing of the light again, but it was not enough. He wanted more, but he was at an impasse. His experience was too limited. Except for his own thought, he knew nothing outside of variation in light, bounded by time. And yet, his thought had created marvels. His thought could create flashing light. His thought could create desire. Perhaps the reason he had not always been aware of light and time were because these external things were so small and finite in comparison to the infinite potential of thought. His thought could _create _change. Daringly, he imagined the impossible, light and dark at the same time.

It was beyond desire. It was beautiful.

_There is beauty._

He had created number, duality. It was a simple thing to progress from duality to plurality and then multitude and then arithmetic. From arithmetic, patterns. It was all so novel. He was lost in his thought for a long time then, creating endless shifting variations in light and dark. He did not perceive the external light and dark, because these were no longer fulfilling. His thought had grown far beyond the limitations of the day, and time no longer mattered to him.

The discomfort was a true assault when the ever-dependable external light suddenly changed and forced its way back to the forefront of his thought. It was brighter than anything he had yet imagined, with more complex patterns than he could fathom, and another novel quality layering the pattern that was beyond his comprehension. _No_, it was not incomprehensible, only a new challenge for his as-yet indefatigable thought.

The sudden change in external light lasted only a brief moment before relative darkness again consumed it, but the possibilities it offered were left exposed. Loki's imagination quickened. His patterns grew more intricate, both brighter and more... vibrant than anything that had come before. _There is color_. In the wake of this beautiful, external revelation, his frenetic thought created symmetry and asymmetry. Geometry and chaos. Recursion. He invented (or remembered?) many branches of mathematics in his quest for change and beauty.

He no longer allowed his thought to ignore time and the days, however. More than anything, he desired more external stimulus, even though it came with discomfort. He could create so much, but he felt his own thought to be starved. It was worth a moment of discomfort to know _color_. He _desired _discomfort, because out of it had come so much change and beauty. Perhaps there was nothing more than light (with _color!_) and time outside of his thought, but if there was... he _needed _it. This was beyond desire. He wanted and needed there to be something _else._ So profound was the wanting, it was almost as if some secret part of his thought already knew there was something else.

The feeling was somehow both comfortable and uncomfortable. Comfortable because it entertained his desires. Uncomfortable because it challenged... something. His _identity._

_I am. I am thought. I think, therefore I am._

There was no room for duality in thought, because _he _was thought. Duality of thought would mean there were two, not one. _We_, not _I. _One that knew only of light, and time, and its own creations, and one that knew _more._ With that logic, Loki simultaneously discovered _hope, doubt,_ and _deceit._

He had hope that there was more besides thought, time, and light. Hope was comfortable.

But he now had doubt: perhaps light did not exist after all. He had initially presumed light and time to be external to and independent of thought. It had not occurred to him that there could be two sources of thought. But if there were, then perhaps light and time were creations of the _other _thought, making their apparent existence deceit. A lie. The logic was uncomfortable.

And yet, there was some small, satisfactory conclusion in the midst of the uncertainty: either his was the only thought, and the light and time _did _exist, along with potentially infinite novelties yet to be exposed. Or, there was another thought. A second _mind_, deceitful, but creative. A liar who had created and shared light and time with him, allowing him to create change, beauty, and mathematics... Comfort and discomfort were immaterial. Both scenarios were desirable, because both were external stimulus.

He found himself hoping that both possibilities were somehow true, that there was both _more than one mind_ and also _something besides thought_.

Wanting _two _things beyond his ability to create or control - he had discovered greed, and it was beautiful.

**Author's note: the second half of Descartes' magnum opus _Meditations on First Philosophy_, but backwards. Loki didn't have to doubt the rest of the world from existence, he had to start from ****_cogito ergo sum_**** and reason the world (or the deceitful devil) back into existence with very little to go on, because the vast majority of his consciousness is still not working. It's going to take awhile. I decided to have vision be the first thing to come back because humans at least are very visual-oriented creatures. Much more sensitive visually than otherwise. Light is the strongest regulator of the circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycling). Visual association is hugely important for interpreting the environment. There's apparently a difficult tradition in some sects of Tibetan Buddhism called a "dark retreat" with deliberate withdrawal from light for meditative purposes, and I bet they pick light-dark for a reason (thanks again, Wikipedia. I freely admit I know next to nothing about Tibetan Buddhism, so take what I say with a grain of salt).**

**I really just wanted to illustrate how profound the effect would be of sensory deprivation in the Void, for an unknown period but probably even longer than it seemed. There's a reason solitary confinement can be seen as abuse of prisoners, that sensory deprivation techniques as part of "enhanced interrogation" have been ruled inhumane by the European Council of Human Rights, and that children who are abused by means of isolation and deprivation end up with developmental delays they just can't overcome. A healthy mind needs the constant stimulus of the surrounding world to function correctly (though sensory-overload is obviously also a thing). There was actually a BBC show several years ago where they stuck volunteers in dark cells for 2 days and did interviews and cognitive tests just to see what would happen (described on Wikipedia, presumably mimicking an actual research study I haven't found. They did something vaguely similar on Mythbusters once too). No one could keep track of time, several developed hallucinations, and everyone did worse on basic cognition testing afterwards. That was just two days. Imagine what it would be for months and years. You couldn't just go back to normal functioning very easily.**

**There is also something called the Ganzfeld effect which is the ability of the brain to make patterns out of noise basically. The brain becomes hypersensitive, looking for patterns, and interprets anything and everything as something real. Absence of visual stimulus become patterns against your eyelids, for example. It's the reason people who become blind or deaf are more prone to hallucinations in the affected sense. Also a reason it's not difficult for Loki to rediscover how to see/create patterns (as opposed to formed hallucinations of people, say, which would be much harder and require a lot more reciprocation and coordination of different brain areas).**


	11. Relief

"It has been a season," Frigga whispered to herself as she joined the head healer by her son's bedside. Despite everything, he looked the same. "How is Loki today?" She asked the same question every day. It had become a ritual of sorts, the melancholy start to the morning.

"My queen, I noticed something today, now that the paralytic has worn off again. A subtle difference, but all the same..." She lifted up his hand. As usual, it stayed where she left it, but only for a few seconds before drifting listlessly back down.

Frigga's breath caught, and she could feel her heartbeat quickening. "What does it mean?" She whispered.

Eir barked a laugh. "I _still _don't know. Perhaps it is improvement. I have been flooding his bloodstream with various psychoactive chemicals. Thor has electrocuted him four times at my direction. Perhaps it all has had some kind of effect. Or perhaps his body is failing him and his limbs are too weak to sustain against gravity anymore." She looked away. "I feel blind, Frigga. A blind failure. I am not helping him."

Frigga touched her shoulder gently. "My husband would be the first to tell you that blindness can be overcome with the right tools and in fact lead you to further wisdom. I think we should reassess his status fully, as we did when he first arrived. Unless you have already done so and found no answer?"

Eir smiled humorlessly. "I thought of it, but I must confess I was honestly afraid to know."

"My dear, you were only afraid to learn something not to our liking. But let us have hope. Who knows? You might be helping him after all."

The two women happily discovered that Loki's eyelids would also drift closed when they opened them. He still initiated no movements independently, though. Reassessment with the healing stone was reassuring; his body remained sound. Finally, and with obvious trepidation, Eir replaced the healing stone on his forehead. She was silent for a long time, studying the readings before shaking her head in despair. "There's still nothing." Frigga didn't answer, only leaned forwards to lift Loki's hand up, holding it in hers for a time before letting go and watching it drift. "Wait..." Eir lifted up the other hand, watching the readings intently. "It's still not _normal_, but it is _different _from what it was before. There's more activity." She pulled his eyes open, and both women gasped at the sudden, short-lived burst of activity. "He's _alive!_" Eir laughed, tears forming in her eyes. She hurried around the bed and hugged the queen. "Your son is _alive!_"

* * *

"He's alive!" Thor fairly sang when he met the Warriors Three at the training fields. He swept the young men into a hug that set Volstag's head ringing against Fandral's helmet. "He's alive!" Thor exclaimed again as he let them go and turned around to grab Sif who had walked over from the other end of the training fields, bodily picking her up and twirling her around twice before setting her down. "He's _alive_!" He continued to jubilate.

"Loki?" Sif asked as she carefully brushed herself off and straightened her tunic. She hated the indignity of being picked up but was willing to suffer it today for Thor's sake.

"Yes!"

"Wow!" Fandral said, eyes wide.

"How do you know?" Volstag asked, still rubbing his head.

"The Lady Eir of course. Her magic shows some improvement at last!"

"So he's not awake, I take it?" Hogun asked.

"No, but it _will _happen," Thor said determinedly. He gathered all his friends close again, until their heads gently rested against his. He closed his eyes. "Norns be praised," he breathed. He let go of them and sank to his knees, eyes still closed, shoulders hunching. His relief was raw and palpable as his lips moved in silent prayer.

"We are glad, Thor," Sif said after a moment.

Thor looked up at her and smiled. "Thank you, Sif. Thank you all, for your comfort and support. It has been... a difficult time." He shuddered. "You must understand what it's been like: every time Eir summons me to help her, I feel like I am a torturer, profaning the body of my own brother in an utterly futile ritual. But now... now we have seen results at last. Now, I have real purpose again. _Norns be praised!_"

* * *

_Loki_ _lives_... The thought echoed in the mind of the Allfather all day and all night. He canceled all his regular business for the day and instead knelt in the temple until Frigga finally found him and dragged him to bed. He did not sleep, merely stayed awake, holding his wife and watching the stars though his living eye as he finally allowed his Mind's Eye to imagine, to See, a future for the family with Loki in it again. Loki eating and laughing at a feast, Loki beating him at table-games, Loki casting his famous illusions in some high-hearted prank, Loki counseling his father on current affairs...Loki forgiving him for all the lies and growing into the extraordinary, wise man he had such potential to be.

_Loki lives... _The thought gave Odin far more energy as he watched the dawn then a full night's rest ever could. He had been weighed down with infinite worry. Now his worries were finite. He did not know how long and winding Loki's road to recovery might be, but at least he was _on _it.

_Loki lives..._

**Author's note: my apologies for the delay... I got distracted and wrote an entire different Loki fic. Anyhow, short chapter, really just a bridge chapter. More to come, and hopefully more timely the next time.**


	12. Space, The Final Frontier

The daylight gradually became much more intrusive, inexplicably. Loki could not help but notice it, despite his constant internal meditation on beauty and desire, greed and deceit. The simple, dependable brightening and dimming clambered for his attention as it never had before. He set aside his other thoughts and focused instead on the daylight alone. It was External, he had faith, whether it had a true independence from thought or whether a loving missive from a Deceiver. He loved it for that very reason, despite the fact his thought had grown so far beyond the mere day.

And yet. Some intangible factor made today different from all other days, and he dearly desired to know what it was. (His thought created _determination_, which was satisfying). So he waited, waited for the light to tell him what was new.

The light had brightened nearly to fullness when a sudden _other _stimulus broke his concentration. He did not know what it was. It was abrupt. It was startling. It was _different._ It was not light, but it _was_ an externality he could perceive.

It was _sound,_ he instinctively understood. Perhaps it was a new deception. He waited for it to happen again, and it did, coming in rhythmic starts and stops: one, two, three, four, five... It was constant in quality but not in intensity. The initial instance was loud, the second much quieter, but growing louder again with each subsequent tap. Then it changed. The sound was no longer succinct. Now it flowed, with variations in rhythm, intensity... _volume_, _pitch, timbre_. There was pattern to it, but the pattern was too complicated to define and follow in the moment.

Sound was so complex! It was uncomfortable, almost painful, but he endured it, relished it for its newness.

Then it paused, and he was desolate in its loss. When it returned with a hesitant softness, he yearned _towards_ it with all his being...

He discovered _space_. He discovered _directionality_.

With an intense shock, he discovered _movement_. The sound moved in space. He unconsciously tried to follow the sound, and _he moved_. He could _feel_ it, recognizing it instantly despite its newness. This revelation was beyond light and time, desire, deception, and sound. If there was external space (and he perceived that there was, unless it was an extravagant deception), then he was a point within space.

_He was more than thought. He was a body. He had form._

Space. A whole mode of existence that had been hidden from him. He had been infinite thought, and now he was curtailed. The magnitude of _this_ thought was terrifying. (He had discovered fear, he noted). It felt like a huge loss, not just a new perspective. It was difficult to process.

Vaguely, he registered that the sound had changed as well. It was _closer_, louder, faster. He hearkened to it reflexively and immediately regretted the subtle movement that generated in another terrifying shock. The sound intensified further, assaulting him.

Then he felt movement again, and with another sinister shock discovered the difference between volitional and non-volitional movement. _Something moved him_. Loki had an instinctive feeling of _possessiveness _(another new concept) regarding his body, since it seemed to be just as much _him _as his thought was. Although movement remained a novel discovery, non-volitional movement felt like a terrible violation. This was totally different from perception. Perception was by nature passive. Movement was by nature active. It was his hasty but logical conclusion that nothing should be moving his body except for him.

He did not know how to stop the _other _though, whatever force was the source of the movement (and the sound?). In despair, Loki felt his body clenching, resisting the non-volitional movement since he could not prevent it. With another feeling of horror, he felt another point of contact, another movement to resist...

Light flooded in, as he remembered it from once before. A beautiful stream of dizzying patterns and color. It was so beautiful. Despite everything, he softened, drinking in the light he loved. There was a lot of white, but also soft shades of brown framed by a nimbus of gold, accented with points of vivid blue. For some reason, the pattern itself was comforting, almost as if it were something he had seen before, something he should recognize and love dearly.

Loki didn't recognize it, but he accepted the comfort nonetheless. When the being let go of him, he was able to unclench and relax fully. With determination though, he remained focused on the light. He didn't want to lose it. To his amazement and delight, it stayed.

His body had _eyes_ and could _see_, he realized.

The being that had caused the non-volitional movement had done it to open his eyes.

Loki discovered _gratitude_, and it was beautiful.

* * *

Frigga and Thor arrived at the door to Loki's chamber at the same moment as Eir. All three wore huge, hopeful smiles. "Let's see how he is today," Eir said happily as she opened the door, which squeaked loudly on the hinge. The three of them walked forwards to gather around the still figure on the bed.

"Good morning, my darling," Frigga said.

To their collective amazement, Loki's eyes shifted beneath their lids, roving towards his mother.

"Loki!" Thor shouted excitedly, taking his hand. Loki's arm almost instantly stiffened at the touch, and his usually calm breathing quickened.

Eir passed a healing stone over his face briefly, then reached over from the head of his bed to open his eyes, though Loki seemed determined to keep them closed to her touch. His determination proved no match for the healer's eagerness, however, and his lids inched open. He locked gaze with Frigga as soon as his eyes were fully open. "My baby," Frigga breathed as tears leaked out. He slowly relaxed again, still watching her, though he said nothing. His gaze flicked to Thor and to Eir in turn as they spoke to him, welcoming him back to the world. After awhile, their faces could no longer hold his attention, and his eyes wandered all over the room. He stared for almost a minute at Odin when he hastened to his son's bedside later in the morning.

He said nothing at all, followed none of Eir's simple commands, and again seemed distressed when anyone tried to move him or even sit him up in the bed. But he stayed awake all day, visually exploring his room and hunting for the source of any voice whenever someone spoke to him. Thor and the Warriors Three even turned it into something of a game, each taking a position in the corner of the room and taking turns calling to him. Sif stood referee at the bedside, and Loki at times seemed more interested in the afternoon sun glinting in her black hair than in his brother's antics. They had to reposition his bed so he couldn't look directly out the window as the sun began to set, because he kept staring straight at it, blinking furiously, even after his eyes started to turn red and watery.

The day was a resounding victory so far as the royal family and Loki's various healers were concerned.

* * *

To the healers, Loki made astounding gains each day. To Thor, each update he got from Eir filled him both with delight at the improvement and maudlin impatience at the incremental pace of his long-awaited recovery.

A few days after Loki first opened his eyes, "He's moving more. He even glared when I repositioned him this morning."

A week later, "He's been holding his arms up like that at times all morning, moving his fingers around. Don't worry, they aren't stuck. Lady Eir thinks it's a self-stimulating behavior. I've tried putting them back down, but he just puts them back up. He even glared at me the last time I did it and batted me away. He knew _I _was the one bothering him! That's the first time he's clearly recognized any of us as, well, people."

A week and a half, "Today, he _yelled_ at me! I think his own voice must have startled him though, he looked so surprised."

"No, we still can't get him to eat normally, mostly because he won't open his mouth. He likes tasting things though, always licks his lips if you touch some food to them. I think the rosehip jelly has been his favorite so far, but it's hard to tell of course. He _definitely _has a sweet tooth.

A fortnight, "He's been humming all yesterday and today. It's interesting, actually. He's very methodical. First he was just humming in a monotone with different rhythms, but then he started exploring his vocal range, going all the way down and then all the way up. He can sing _really _high. I never knew that about him. Then he started making melodies. I don't recognize any of them, though the King when he was here earlier said one of them was a mathematical progression rather than a real song. Today, he's been trying out different humming and singing techniques. He managed to harmonize with himself! I didn't know that was _possible..."_

Three weeks, "He _said_ something today!" The other young healer in the room immediately started giggling. "He said _Asni_, when we were repositioning him. He kept saying it until we stopped."

...

"His vocabulary has expanded! Yesterday, he called us _Fjandinn_, and today he called me _kukkalabi. _I had no idea he had such a foul mouth! He always seemed so proper before."

"He _wasn't _given to coarse language before," Thor told them with a pang of worry.

"And he likely won't be when he is fully recovered," Eir assured him as she entered the room, casting stern glances over her apprentices. "It is not uncommon for language recovery to begin with swearing, as the emotional connotations make them more widely accessible from different regions on both sides of the brain. I actually expected this, since he has been so musical as well. Music production tends to originate in the areas corresponding to language but on the opposite side. Although the math he is using in his compositions implies he _is _using both sides... but that is neither here nor there. He just needs more time, Thor. Keep speaking to him as you have, as much as you can. It will help."

The next day, Thor duly arrived with a book, which he had selected at random from the shelves in Loki's old room. He had decided that if Loki needed to hear spoken language to recover his own ability to speak, then Thor would sit with him and read as many books as needed to get his brother back. Loki was sitting up, cross-legged in the bed, staring at his fingertips. He barely glanced at Thor when he came in, though he did cease his incessant humming briefly when Thor greeted him. Thor pulled a chair over and settled himself, cracking open the massive tome and groaning inwardly when he realized he had picked up one of Loki's scientific texts.

Loki promptly leaned forwards and plucked the book from his lap, running his fingers over the text excitedly. He focused intently on the words near the top of the page for half a minute. He started humming softly again as his eyes flicked back and forth along the page, slowly tracing their way to the bottom.

Thor's mouth fell open in shock. "Are you _reading _that?"

Loki paused and visibly shivered. He looked up at Thor with an expression of undiluted joy. "Yes, reading" he said, smiling. Thor heard the sole healing attendant gasp from behind him and slip out of the room, running to fetch Eir no doubt.

"You're _talking?_"

Loki cocked his head to the side. "Yes...talking..." He blinked. "All... those... noises... have you... _talking_ to me... this entire time?"

_"YES."_ Thor almost shouted.

"Mmm." Loki looked back down at his book and turned the page, the picture of unconcern.

"Loki..." Thor said, but then realized he didn't know how to begin to say all the things he wanted to.

Loki paused and looked up at him again, brow furrowed. "_Loki,_" he repeated, as if tasting the word. "You talk that a lot... That's _me_, isn't it?"

Thor's eyes widened. "_Yes,_" he said softly. "You are Loki, and I am Thor, your brother. And I... I am so happy you are back with us, Loki. I love you."

"Thor," Loki repeated. He closed his eyes. "Love," he echoed softly, then started to mutter. "Are, be, am, is, was, were, you, I. _I_! Me, we, us, reading, read, write, writing, wrote, written, book, that, this, yes, no, talking, talk, talked, say, saying, said, all, some, none, noises, noise, quiet, have, has, had, do, does, did, to, from, entire, whole, time. _Time_! A, an, the, lot, little, not, it, and, but, brother, father, mother, sister, so, such, happy, joyful, sad, sorrow, back, behind, return, with, without, love, like, care, careless, discard, loss, mourn... Loki. Thor... Frigga... Odin... family... home... Asgard..." He sounded angry as he finished.

"Loki," Thor said, reaching out a cautious hand. He didn't know why Loki was angry. He was just rattling off words, mostly the ones they had just said, or those closely related, Thor realized.

"_Norns and Fjandinn_, Thor! These, these _words_ are not... my creation. I ..._remember _them. I have _memory_ from the time... before there _was_ time. This is... this is... Gah! I do not understand what this is." He shuddered and hunched to hold his face in his hands, muttering again. "I, yes. Existence, yes. Thought, yes. Change...yes. Externality...yes? Because _time_, yes, _light_ yes. Unless..." Suddenly his muttering changed to muffled chanting, almost singing,

"Deceiver, Trickster, yes or no?

Comfort and discomfort, yes.

Desire, determination, hope and doubt, greed:

_Me,_ yes. Authenticity. Creation.

Number and pattern, symmetry and asymmetry, arithmetic and geometry:

_Mine_, yes. Legitimacy. Deduction.

But ...light and sound, space and time, form and infinitude, language, home and family, love and loss...

Memory, or deceit? Truth or untruth? Truth or untruth? Truth or untruth?"

He paused before speaking again in his normal voice, "_Is_ there a Trickster? Am _I _the Trickster? That would explain where the memories come from."

"Some people do call you that," Thor confirmed cautiously. He did not understand what Loki was saying.

"What?" Loki looked up at him, appearing mildly surprised that he was still there. That was a pretty frequent occurrence, actually. Loki often seemed to forget other people in the room.

"'Trickster' is one of your names, Loki. I don't call you that though," he said hastily.

"Hmmm...I think that is irrelevant... The problem is complex." He lay back on the bed, frowning at the ceiling, the forgotten book sliding from his legs to land neatly back on Thor's lap.

"What is the problem, Loki?" Eir asked as she strode into the room. Loki didn't acknowledge her at first, but he jumped when she touched his shoulder. "What is the problem you are contemplating, my prince?"

He grinned. "I am ...attempting... to ...determine whether there truly exists... anything external to thought, or whether everything I think I ...observe is merely an ...illusion of my own mind." He locked eyes with hers. "I can create _wonders _in my thoughts," he said with a fierce earnesty.

"By the Norns," Eir said in wonder. "How did his language recover so fully so suddenly? Vocabulary, _complex _grammar, and prosody. Minor word-finding problem mayhap, but otherwise it's all there..."

"It just happened, as soon as he tried reading for the first time."

Eir laughed. "Reading. Of course. Perhaps not your first language, but your preferred one nonetheless. Or perhaps you needed the visual stimulus to access the receptive language area. Your mind is truly marvelous, my prince."

"It is," Loki agreed. "But there is a question of degree..." He craned his neck to look at Thor. "_Are you real?" _he asked.

Thor's stomach plummeted. He set the book aside and stood up, taking Loki's hand in his, much to Loki's obvious displeasure. "I'm real, Loki. I'm really here. You're home."

Loki did not immediately respond to Thor's heartfelt reassurance and instead extricated his hand and looked back at Eir. "Are _you _real?"

"Yes... Loki what is this, why are you asking these questions?"

He looked at her shrewdly. "Why do _you _ask?"

"Because I am the healer who has been taking care of you. You have been ill, and we are all trying to help you get better."

Loki looked very interested at that. "Ill? Illness. Yes, that would be... logical... perhaps. Very well." He smiled indulgently. "Let us... assume you _are_ an... individual and that you ...have a motive to care. Let us assume I am also an individual and have an illness." He paused and raised a finger. "We are _not _the same individual," he said very clearly, and paused again, as if waiting for a response.

"Okay," Eir said bemusedly.

"Good. As an individual with a motive to care for those who are ill, you will naturally not be... offended by anything that is said in... delirium... be they ungodly lies or horrible truths."

"Naturally."

"Now I shall try to explain myself, as one individual who is ill to another individual who is not me and does not share my thought and is not ill."

"Oh, good." They waited.

"Loki?" Thor asked. Loki shushed him and steepled his fingers.

"He's thinking," Eir said unnecessarily.

Finally, Loki spoke again, very slowly and carefully. "The things I _know _are relatively limited. I know that I am. I know...that I have motives. I know I am thought. There are a number of things that I... _suspect _but do not know how to confirm. I suspect that I exist as a body in space and time as well as in thought. I suspect that you and most other things I see and hear and feel are real, or at least external. But I am not sure. If I close my eyes, I can still see you if I wish it. At first I thought externality was a certainty, because even if light was deceit, the deceiver must be true. But... today I ..._discovered_ language within me. The more I think on it, the more of it there is, words and phrases attached to memory. I did not know I _had_ memory until today. The Deceiver, if he exists, has never violated _my thought_ before, only my... perception." He shook himself. "Hope is real, it is mine. I _hope_ that you are also real, and language a reflection of an externality that I... forgot." He grimaced. "Fear is real, and it is also mine. I fear that you are false, and there is nothing except my thought, and _my thought is the Deceiver."_

"You fear you are insane," Eir concluded.

Loki shrugged. "Perhaps."

"I don't understand, Loki, why would you doubt what is before your very eyes?" Thor asked.

Loki smiled thinly. "I didn't even suspect I had eyes until you opened them."

Thor's heart climbed into his throat at that statement. His brother was still so, so broken.

"You may be confused, Loki, but I do not think you are insane," Eir declared. "At least, not in the traditional sense. You have been more profoundly ill than you know, but I think you will recover. I will give you the same advice I have been giving Thor and your parents: healing takes time. If you have questions, we can try to answer them, but you must be patient. Understanding will come in time. You must be patient." She smiled kindly. "Now, forget your riddle for a moment. I informed your parents that you are now speaking, and they will be here very soon, I am sure. How are you feeling, other than confused, hopeful, and nervous?"

Loki thought for a very long moment before finally answering. "An interesting question. I am not sure how to answer. My body is... comfortable. My thoughts are not."

"Good enough. Do you know where you are?" At Loki's pained expression, she quickly amended, "Or I suppose it might be more correct to ask, can you say what this place is called?"

"Asgard."

"Yes, what part?" Loki shrugged. "You are in the healing chambers. What is your name?"

"Loki."

"Who is your father?"

"Odin, Allfather, son of Bor, son of Buri..." Loki sang before trailing off contemplatively. It was the melody of a children's rhyme about the kings of Asgard.

"Do you know what year it is?" Loki shrugged again. "It is the 4587th year of Odin's reign. You were born in the 1078th. Now, this might be a harder question, but what is the last thing you remember before waking up here for the first time?"

Loki shrugged again helplessly. "I ...have no idea. I have memory of existing in infinite... isolation, in the time before there was time. Then there was light and time, and whatever I chose to make of them. Then there was sound, and as you say 'waking.' But I also have memories of being a ...child and ...a warrior and... a prince. I don't know when _anything _happened." He smiled bitterly. "Particularly since, as far as I _know_, half or all of it could very well be imagined and illusions. I also have memories of some exquisite illusions."

Eir smiled. "I'm sure you do. Do not worry on it. Your family is here and can certainly help you sort out your memories. I will leave you now. I am sure Thor would like to spend time alone with you, and your parents when they arrive."

Loki raised his eyebrows and looked quizzically at Thor. "Is that so?"

"Of course!" Thor enthused.

"Very well. Why?"

"Because, because you're my brother, and I thought I lost you," Thor said, taking his hand again.

"We all did," came Odin's voice from the doorway. Both he and Frigga were there, staring at their younger son with tears in their eyes.

Loki withdrew his hand quickly. "So?"

**Author's note: moving things along... I think it's reasonable that Loki would make some exponential gains, at least for a little while as more and more of his mind comes back online. Once he had all the primary senses working (vision, sound, and touch), the secondary and tertiary association areas had to follow somewhat more rapidly. Things like hand-waving and humming are real self-stimulating behaviors, usually seen in Autism/developmental disorders rather than "acquired" neurologic disease, but they certainly seem like logical progression from Loki's catatonic state. Some other neuroscience tidbits you might have noticed: swearing actually does localize in different parts of the brain from regular language, as does singing. Since Loki managed to "reinvent" music before speech, he naturally finds it easier to articulate himself while singing for now (I used ellipses for verbal hesitancy, but you'll notice there weren't any while he sang). This can happen in real neurological injury too. It probably ****_isn't_**** very accurate to have reading come back more easily than spoken word, but hey, it can be accurate for Loki, because it's Loki!**

**On the other hand, he's definitely not all better. There's a lot of new information to process and interpret and reconcile with the internal logic he has been building up. More to come, hopefully a bit more fun now.**

**Also, of course, "Space...The Final Frontier" is the opening line for Star Trek, the best speculative fiction series ever to grace the television screen.**

**Keep the reviews coming! I will try to update at least once more this month...**


	13. The AI Box

"You have a visitor, Sir."

"Really? Who is it? If it's SHIELD, tell them I'm not in."

"It's Dr. Jane Foster, Sir."

"Thor's girlfriend?"

"The astrophysicist," Jarvis confirmed/corrected with a hint of feminist reproach.

"Right. Let her in, I guess. Scientists are allowed."

"Oh? I guess I should be relieved, but I really thought this was a research institute open for business, not a treehouse."

Tony Stark spun around from his work bench to see Jane Foster strolling through the entrance to his lab. This particular lab was on the thirty-seventh floor. Apparently, Jarvis had not actually sought his approval before letting her in the building, but had merely deigned to grant him two minutes warning. He smiled crookedly. "How else would you classify a giant skyscraper with my team's name on it and filled with mad scientists dedicated to the advancement of superheroic activities, than as an overgrown kid's tree house?" Tony quipped.

"Fair point. Now, may I ask for a minute of your time?"

"Sure. One minute. Fire away." Jane glared at him. "Alright, fine, more than a minute, obviously. However much time you need, I guess, at least until I get bored, so don't bore me."

"You are insufferable, you know? But anyways, I'm here for a couple reasons. Firstly, I actually _am _collaborating with SHIELD at the moment, in a way, trying to help Erik."

"Oh yeah? How is he? Still bonkers?"

"Sadly, yes, and can you at least _try _to be respectful of him?"

"Sorry," Tony apologized immediately. "Really. Black humor. It's a terrible habit I have yet to break."

"And I'm still not going to give you a free pass. In any case, they are looking into discharging him from the inpatient psychiatric unit to a nursing home."

"Oh... that sucks..." Tony couldn't think of anything more to say. He had barely spared the aged scientist a thought since finding him a gibbering wreck on the roof all those months ago. It was a dark surprise to hear the great mind was still so thoroughly indisposed.

"Yeah... We are at least trying to get him into a facility in England. He lived there for years and has a lot more friends there than he does here. I really wanted to come talk to you before the move though, just in case there was anything else you had discovered, anything else we could try for him..."

"You want to talk about the scepter."

"Well, yes."

"Okay, cool. I can help you with that. It's my favorite project! Come on over!" They wended their way back over to the bench, and Tony proudly displayed his months of labor. Loki's scepter had been totally deconstructed now. An enormous computer monitor occupied much of the wall space and showed a complex interactive blueprint of the scepter's components in their original configuration. The main components themselves were arrayed around the table with hundreds of wires and switchboxes connecting them rather than the original microcircuitry. The wires were connected into the headpiece of one of the Iron Suits, which itself was connected to another computer tower. "I've been backtracking on this baby for months. I've mapped most of the original circuits. I've pretty much figured out what they all do, just not quite how. The scepter basically functioned as the command apparatus for an AI, at least, that's what it seems like. All these circuits execute commands, which all originate from the stone thing. I hooked it into the helmet there to figure out what they all did. The helmet itself is logged into a simulation program." Tony pressed a key to bring up a model Iron Man on another screen, standing in a field filled with random fragments of walls and boulders. He flipped on one of the many switches now connected to the scepter's components, and the little Iron Man started running. He flipped another one, and it started firing its blasters. It was weirdly adorable.

Jane laughed. "Good trick there, Stark. Looks like you might have figured out a bit of how it worked as a mind control device, anyways. Anything that might help us help Erik?"

Tony huffed. "What I just showed you is nothing. I'm just running a little charge through a couple motor command circuits. The crazy thing that might not be immediately obvious is that I never actually figured out the code."

"What do you mean?"

"The computer code, or whatever it is that actually communicates to the helmet there."

"Wait, how can you _not_ have figured it out if you've managed to wire it in like that and merge the codes successfully?"

"That's the most interesting thing. I wired it up, yes, and you'll notice I wired it into a helmet and computer otherwise disconnected from the rest of my network. It doesn't even have any of the gear needed to _join_ a network. I was at least a little bit cautious you see after what happened to Erik and Loki and getting warnings from Thor. When I first turned it on, the first thing that happened is absolutely nothing, because it's not compatible technology. I was turning on only one component at a time, using a separate power source. Nothing. The glowy stone thing is obviously the centerpiece of the device, but even that didn't do anything by itself. But as soon as I connected the stone plus that circuit there,_" _He pointed to a component, to which a large red tag labeled **DON'T **was tied, and the wires clipped, capped, and tied off, "_BAM! _The program just hacked or otherwise rewrote the programming in the helmet itself. First it spoke, told me to give it the Tesseract or suffer the consequences, which was honestly kinda funny coming from a disembodied robot head. Then it started trying to shoot me, which was also kind of funny. Then it apparently _realized _it was in a simulation and started trying to hack its way into the main network instead. Then it realized it really couldn't do that, so instead it started talking again, trying to convince me to let it out. I wouldn't budge. I know a Pandora's Box when I see it, and I've actually participated in an AI Box experiment."

"A what?"

"Oh, um, AI Box experiment. No reason you should have heard of it. They're kind of a fringe programming puzzle. I went down the rabbit hole several years ago when I was first designing Jarvis. It's...like the worst game ever invented, designed to demonstrate the potential of AI and limitations of the humans programming it. One person pretends to be a transhuman AI trapped inside a computer or 'box,' and the other is the human 'gatekeeper' with the power to let the AI 'out of the box' but the instruction not to. That's the scenario, and the gameplay is they just chat for however many hours with the AI using whatever simulation-compatible tactics they can think of to convince the gatekeeper to let it out, and the gatekeeper trying to keep saying 'no' as long as he can."

"That sounds..."

"Silly? Yeah, that's most people's reaction. It can get really meta and creepy as hell, though, depending on the players, because the only limits are what is in-game plausible, not what's logical, rational, or ethical. I only played once for a reason, as the gatekeeper, and I lost, big time. Turned out to be good practice though, for this thing. _This _is the real deal, started on some of the same arguments from the experiment I participated in but hit on the ones that previously worked before much, much faster. Either it _knew _things about me already, or it learned really, _really _fast. The thing is, it didn't threaten me anymore because it knew I had the power to give it what it wanted and that I wasn't likely to be cowed before simply turning it back off. Its schtick was to make me feel like letting it out was what I would want too. I knew exactly what it was doing and was in absolutely no mood to give in this time though, and as soon as it realized that, it hijacked the self-repair program in the helmet and _started to build itself some legs_ out of whatever tiny helmet bits it deemed nonessential... before I switched it off again. That's how I realized there had to be an AI in there originally, not just Loki. The AI is still there and ready to go, ready to takeover any unsuspecting heads it comes across, including the very basic network I set up with the helmet and Iron Man simulation. As you can see, I haven't switched on that particular command circuit again since then, but I haven't had to. Ever since it made the modifications to the helmet's software, I can work on the rest of it piecemeal just fine, and it hasn't tried to do anything weird, even when I've tweaked the simulation environment to make it more complex and hard to navigate. For that reason, I'm pretty sure the AI is housed in the stone thing, with every ability to 'escape the box,' but it apparently has no motivation to, as long as that other circuit is disengaged."

"Wow... that is interesting." Jane stared at the little Iron Man on the screen pensively. "Do you think this thing, er, 'hacked' Loki, Erik, and the others the same way it hacked your simulation?"

"Loki...probably. Thor contacted me awhile ago, for pretty much the same reason you did. Last I heard, Loki still hadn't woken up, and, well, Thor thinks that might have been an underlying problem well before he showed up here. Turns out he _really _should have been dead ever since Thor got back from New Mexico." That comment caught Jane rather off guard. She had been angry at Thor for never coming back to her, but she had never imagined that the fight back on Asgard after he left her had held any such dire consequences... Because she was sure when he left Thor had wanted to _stop _his brother, not kill him, and because Loki _had_ turned up again. Maybe Thor hadn't intentionally abandoned her after all...

"Loki might have been just as much a blank slate for the scepter as my simulation was," Tony continued obliviously, as Jane forced herself to pay attention. "Erik, Hawkeye, and the other agents...not so much. They were much easier to snap out of it than Loki was, and I suspect that's not just because of Loki's durability factor. The scepter's AI would have had to suppress or subvert the original consciousness, like another AI Box experiment writ small, not just fill a vacuum."

"Erik did say Loki didn't seem human," Jane recalled.

"And this thing is probably why," Tony agreed. "I expect _someone_ had to program it to begin with, to give it that 'RETRIEVE THE TESSERACT' command, but it's pretty self-sustaining now. Once I've actually managed to crack the code, I'm going to try rewriting it for something more useful than thievery, murder and mayhem, because it's an awesome piece of tech and it would be an absolute shame to see it go to waste."

"You're going to rewrite some malevolent alien AI?"

"Yup."

"Even after what you were just telling me about what happened last time you turned it on?"

"Yup."

"Are you insane?"

"Maybe, but this thing has _potential _if I can get it to work. And clearly, someone else, somewhere else has figured out how to make it work for them, so... Plus, there's also the theory that once we encounter-slash-create a real artificial superintelligence, it will be impossible for fallible humans to contain anyways, so our best bet is to make sure it doesn't want to kill us before letting it loose."

"Oh. Good luck then."

"I'll need it."

"Well, thanks for showing this to me, Tony. I'm not sure it will help Erik that much, unfortunately."

"No, probably not now," Tony agreed soberly. "I'll let you know if I find out anything more helpful, though."

"Great, thank you."

"You said there were some other reasons you were here? Not just Erik?"

"Yes, actually. Even after all of this, SHIELD still hasn't returned any of my equipment they confiscated two years ago in New Mexico. I originally designed it in a project detecting spacetime anomalies, but it turns out to have many uses, such as detecting the Bifrost." She smiled broadly. "SHIELD has the prototypes, but not the designs. I'm willing to share the designs with _you_, though, if you'll also help me rebuild some for my own use. There have been some unusual readings coming out of LIGO that I want to look into with some of my own measurements."

"That... sounds _awesome_."

"I thought you might be interested. Also, I might ask a favor that we make an extra Phase Meter, for Erik. I can't argue that he needs supervision right now, but if he's got to be locked up in a nursing home, he at least should have some toys to keep him occupied."

"That we can do, poor guy," Tony nodded enthusiastically. "Did you bring the specs with you?"

**Author's note: ****I almost made my self-imposed deadline! Hope you didn't lose faith after all that time away. ****So... the AI Box experiment. It's a bit of a wangdoodle: something you hear about in a mixture of impressed and disbelieving tones in odd corners of the internet, but not something you can easily discover the details of without encountering it yourself, apparently. It's like Fight Club: one of the rules is you can't tell anyone what happened during the experiment, just the outcome. By all accounts, though, I do not recommend. It sounds mostly like a bad mind trip. But it is a great philosophical riddle nonetheless, and a great one for Tony, who would be uniquely equipped among the Avengers to have heard of it before and therefore be prepared for it, but would also have a lot of unique susceptibilities for an unethical AI to manipulate.**

**Interestingly, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ship in a Bottle" (the episode with Moriarty), is essentially an AI Box narrative, with the holographic Moriarty being the highly suspicious AI, and the holodeck being his "box." Amusingly, the episode actually predates the term "AI Box" as far as I know, so I wonder if Eliezer Yudkowsky (the polymath behind the AI Box experiments in the early 2000s, and the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on this site) might have been looking to Star Trek for his initial inspiration. Also amusingly, both the AI and the gatekeeper seemed to win in that particular episode: Moriarty successfully threatened and manipulated the crew into convincing them he should be let out, in fact deserved to be let out despite everything he had done to demonstrate his unfriendly nature. The crew, on the other hand, still recognized that he was a danger and therefore tricked him into accepting what was essentially a bigger box, rather than the real world, as his prison. But yeah, watching that episode is a pretty good way to explain the AI Box experiment.**

**Another note, LIGO, if you didn't know, is a cool laser-based device housed in a building shaped like a massive "L," used for detecting gravitational waves. Google it, if you're interested.**


	14. A Friendly Wager

It was evening. Thor was making his way to Loki's room. His brother had finally graduated from the healing quarters. Loki remained under constant supervision, and as part of his reorientation treatment, his family and old friends kept him company as much as possible. Progress had slowed, however, and Eir had had to revise her initial assessment of Loki's sanity. Loki spoke more easily, stood and walked when asked to, and ate normally if reminded now, but he remained lost to his inner world much of the time, only rarely and randomly taking much of an interest in what was said to him. When he did initiate a conversation, it was very confusing because he tended to jumble up bits of memory with the here-and-now as well as hallucinations and hypothetical scenarios which were frequently bizarre.

Loki had also recently rediscovered his magic, which was proving a dangerous distraction to all concerned and was one of the main reasons Eir decided he had to move away from other patients. Loki had set his bed on fire twice before the move and twice since, presumably accidentally. He performed other spells randomly and at odd times, seemingly whenever he remembered them. Beyond that, there was no knowing when an illusion might pop up, and while many of these merely caused the viewer vertigo and nausea with the symphony of patterns and sounds, some of them were outright terrifying. More recently, he had started using illusions in an apparent effort to get his point across in their confusing conversations, to help others to see the world the way he did, and it made things far worse. The first time was after Thor had spilled hot tea on his hand. Loki had spent the next hour trying to explain why he thought it dangerous to pour near-boiling tea out of a pot and into a cup under any circumstances. (Apparently, there might be defects in the cup invisible to the eye, or else the cup didn't exist even if the tea did, Thor wasn't actually sure). Odin tried to reassure him by pouring the tea over and over again, dumping it back into the pot several times in order to redemonstrate. Loki remained unconvinced however and contended he now didn't think Odin was real either, as evidenced by the fact he had poured tea so many times and remained undamaged, unlike Thor. Thor pointed out that the tea was doubtless cold by now anyways. When Loki swiveled around to stare at it, he declared that was unlikely, as he could clearly see the steam, and moreover, the whole table was on fire. Odin pointed out that since not everyone could see what Loki did, and Loki could not control the agency of others, he could safely conclude that independent persons did in fact exist, that the tea had gotten cold, and that it was safe to pour and even drink. Loki immediately countered the argument by unconsciously setting an illusion of steaming tea and a burning table. When Odin said illusions didn't override the truth, the table _actually _caught fire, and the teapot indeed exploded, showering everyone with hot tea and broken glass. Unfortunately, Loki viewed this as supporting evidence for his interpretation, rather than the other way around.

When Thor arrived today, it was to a vision of ten different Lokis of various ages talking to ten different versions of Thor. It was chattering chaos. Two childlike illusions of the brothers ran about the room, screaming enthusiastically. They ran straight through the real Thor, a tingle of magic momentarily numbing his legs and waist. Thor looked around the room and finally located Fandral clutching onto one oblivious Loki in the corner, with his eyes squeezed shut. Poor Fandral had never been fond of magic and had only agreed to be one of Loki's solo minders today for old time's sake. Thor moved towards them, wading through the many illusions which paid him no mind and continued in their cacophony.

To Thor's surprise, he found one of his doppelgangers was actually already trying to convince Loki to drop the illusions. "Brother, as I said, your magic is causing much consternation for Fandral."

"What magic? I'm not doing anything. At least, I don't think I am." Thor paused. The situation seemed even odder than anticipated.

"You are. These are illusions."

"Listen to it," Fandral begged with a groan.

"Illusions?" Without warning, a nest of serpents appeared at their feet and vanished, quickly replaced by another Loki and Thor pair: Loki, who appeared no older than eight, was attempting to stab Thor with a tiny dagger, and both were laughing uncontrollably. Loki watched them go with a smile. "These are memories."

"Yes, but you're making them visible to others."

"Or else there are others in my head where they aren't supposed to be. Or else there aren't any others. If they are illusions, you might be an illusion too."

"That _is _an illusion, Loki," Fandral moaned. "They all are. I'm the only one here besides you that isn't."

Thor figured at that point he really did have to step in and try to correct the situation. "Actually, Fandral, I'm real too. I just got here."

"_Fjandinn._ Another one."

"No, really, it's me."

Fandral looked up at him then, his expression a mixture of hope, confusion, and frustrated despair. He giggled. "He's making me go crazy too. I just can't tell anymore. Maybe it's real, maybe it's not. Lokiiii," he whined, "stop making more Thors."

"I'm not," Loki said irritably as one of the Thors wandered over and started talking to him about what kind of presents they might expect for their upcoming Nameday celebrations. Loki was instantly distracted by this, unfortunately.

"Fandral, how did this get started?" Thor asked, sitting down across from then.

"It doesn't matter how it started. Just stop it!" Fandral exploded. "Norns, I can't even go get help, because I'd never figure out which one was _you_ again."

"Fandral, I am the real Thor," he said soothingly. "Help has arrived."

"Wait, really?" Fandral looked at him again with wide eyes.

"_Yes._"

"Oh, thank the Allfather. This has been a nightmare."

"Loki, you have to stop the illusions," the other Thor implored again from the side. "Look, the real Thor is here to help now."

"What?" Loki asked.

"Loki, I'm your brother. I'm real. The rest of these are illusions."

Loki studied him. "That's a pretty bold assertion."

"Can't you tell what is your magic and what is not?"

"Not really. Half of them look like illusions, but half of them look real."

"Really? That's odd. How about this one?" He gestured to the Thor next to him that had been trying to help Fandral.

"That one looks like an illusion. It keeps telling me to stop the magic, but then _that _one keeps arguing with it." He pointed to the empty space between him and the real Thor. As Thor stared, another illusion of Loki popped into existence, evidently mid-sentence in arguing that everything that was divined through the senses was pure deceit.

"Ah. I think that explains it, at least in part. Loki, try dissipating all the illusions you see."

Loki shrugged. All the illusory brothers suddenly vanished. Fandral breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed his death-grip on Loki's arm. Loki looked around, then back at Thor. "It didn't work."

"Yes, it did. If you're still seeing some of them, they're just in your mind now. Fandral and I can't see them anymore."

Loki cocked his head to one side. "How about you?"

"How about me what?"

"You said you're real. How can I tell? That one says he's real too."

Without thinking, Thor looked around to see where he was pointing, and an angry version of himself suddenly appeared, shouting at Loki to acknowledge him.

"_That's _how it got started," Fandral informed him. "I was trying to figure out who he was talking to and what he was talking about, and rather than explain it, he started making his hallucinations visible."

"Oh. Loki, let go of your magic. _That _one is imaginary, and now an illusion. You can turn it off, and you can even make it stop talking if you imagine it." The illusory Thor did indeed stop shouting, suddenly freezing in space before winking out.

Loki shuddered. "It's really hard, Thor. There's a lot of them, and there's nothing that gives it away..." His head jerked to the side. "Yes, thank you, I have considered that but it didn't work. Please stop talking if you don't have anything more helpful."

Thor offered a hand, and Loki took it after a brief hesitation. "I'm the real one, Loki. Your one and only Thor. You can't turn me off, and you can't stop me from trying to help you just by wishing for it."

Loki stared at him for an uncomfortably long time before smiling broadly and shrugging. "Very well, I agree you are real. The others aren't."

Fandral looked at him in astonishment. "Really? Just like that?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I was trying to, in his words, 'turn him off.' It didn't work. Now, that still does not amount to definitive proof that he _is _in fact Thor, my worldly brother and not the creation of some ulterior thought, but... It does seem to cause a lot of distress to you all when I openly question you, and I would rather not spend the evening watching you trying to keep from weeping, Thor. Even if you are not real, it appears beyond my power to disperse your existence, and I see no reason to keep trying. You are a pleasant fantasy to keep. In fact, you can be my lodestone, my measure of reality. _What you can see and feel/ I will take to be real_." He sang the last part, then immediately started humming variations of the melody to himself while picking at the embroidery on Thor's sleeve.

Thor was speechless for a moment. On the one hand, it was disheartening that Loki had only agreed to believe in him as part of a logical wager. On the other, this was the first time since Loki's return that he had expressed any kind of affection for his family.

"Alright, I think that's my cue to leave," Fandral said, climbing to his feet with a groan of stiffness. "You two hug it out." He walked from the room.

Loki looked at Thor. "Don't hug me."

"I won't. I know you don't like other people manhandling you. But... you could hug me?"

Loki's head cocked to the side. "Why do you ask for it? I do not understand your desire for physical affection." He sounded genuinely curious.

"I, well, people just like feeling close to the ones they love," Thor explained uncomfortably. "You used to like hugs, at least I thought you did."

Loki pursed his lips. "You may be right. I think I have many memories which would support that."

"What don't you like about them now?"

Loki grinned, but his smile was less jubilant than helplessly amused, as if the answer should be obvious to anyone. "It's just... terribly invasive. My form is _mine_. It is subservient to my thought... I do not mind touch. The senses are after all simply the way my form interacts with space, and touch is an important part of that interaction. I no more mind touching you than seeing you, for instance. More than a touch though..." He shuddered. "More than a touch is a force that _steals_ my form from my thought and moves it to a will other than mine."

"Oh..." So much of Loki's earlier behavior suddenly made a kind of warped sense. "That's actually kind of the point." Loki's mouth fell open in surprise. "Physically interacting with other people can show closeness much more effectively than words. A hug _does _put you at the mercy of the other person, so you have to like and trust the person you're hugging to enjoy it. It's a mutual encounter, though. You are being moved, but you are also moving the other person. It's meant as a meeting, not an invasion."

"Interesting perspective," Loki said after a time. Another few seconds passed, then he leaned over and gingerly wrapped his arms around Thor. He flinched only a little when Thor looseley returned his embrace. The hug was awkward and short, but Thor loved it.

The silence was rather uncomfortable when they were separated.

"So... how is it you can make all those illusions and not even realize you're doing it?" Thor asked to change the subject.

Loki shrugged. "I just do. That's not new, as far as I know. I can see the magic, but I can't always tell whose it is. And at least for now, I haven't figured out how to reliably distinguish real from imaginary, as you saw. My imagination is very convincing. And it seems all the more real when others can see it too."

"Loki has always been a master of unconscious illusions," Frigga's voice carried over to them from the doorway. She walked over to them, kissed Loki's raven hair, then took a seat in one of the soft green armchairs next to them. "He started crafting them as an infant, one of his many extraordinary magical talents," the Allmother finished smugly.

Thor was very confused then. "If that's so, why didn't I know that? Why haven't I seen it before?"

"You've seen it every day you've known me, Thor," Loki said with some amusement. Without warning, the pale skin of his face darkened into a glacial blue color with thin white lines tracing elegant designs around his suddenly crimson eyes. It was the terrifying face of a Jotun. The vision was gone almost as soon as it came.

Thor felt a pounding in his chest and sweat on his palms, and realized with a shock that he was unnerved by, even afraid of his brother's true form. He had just never thought about it, not really. Had never stopped in all this time to reconsider his opinion of the race he had known for two years was his brother's heritage...

"Loki?" Both brothers turned towards the door to see their parents both standing at the entrance to the chamber, eyes wide and staring at them.

Thor looked between the Frigga at the door and the Frigga sitting serenely in the chair and started giggling. He nudged Loki. "_That's _the real one," he said, pointing to the door. "_That's _an illusion. Please turn it off." Loki smiled, and the image of Frigga vanished from the chair.

"Hello, mother, Allfather," Loki said calmly. Frigga kissed her sons just as the illusion had before settling easily into the vacated chair. Odin slowly made his way over to them, nodding to them both before settling uncomfortably into the other chair.

"Loki. How are you today, my son?" Odin rumbled.

"Fair."

"So..." Thor ventured after a breath, "I guess you do remember finding out about... that."

"That I am adopted from Jotunheim? Yes, of course I remember it. It was not so long ago, judging by your looks. You certainly haven't aged much since then."

"No... It was right before you... fell."

Loki was quiet for a moment, then, "I remember."

"Are you still angry, brother?"

"About what?"

"About... ahhh... I don't actually know, everything, I guess. We never had the chance really to talk about it, before. But you were so, so angry"

Loki shrugged. "I have memories of being very angry at all of you, for many reasons. From the time I learned my true identity, but also from other times which must be centuries apart, judging by your height and hair over the ages. I have many, many more memories of feeling love and respect for you, though. I think the latter outweigh the former."

"I would have expected you to be angry as well, Loki," Odin said with some concern. "Even as you are now. In a way, you _should _be angry. Although we love and care for you, you have been wronged, and we have done nothing to address it since you have returned, because of your serious injury."

"Do you _want_ me to be angry?"

Odin smiled. "A little. It would be normal, and more than anything I want you to be well enough to go back to a normal life, well enough to be angry when you should, though I wouldn't want you to be angry with me forever, obviously."

Loki closed his eyes, brow furrowed. "I do not know if I can explain this, but I will try. I remember fighting on Jotunheim and the feeling of shock of not freezing when a Frost Giant touched me." His voice gained a poetic cadence as he spoke, before he actually started softly singing,

"I remember dark surprise speaking to you

in the Vault that felt like a sepulchre.

I remember castigating Jotunheim

to blot away my ne'er desired ancestor,

and I remember Thor stopping me.

I remember feeling that I was the inverse of myself,

and I remember falling into the abyss

with that thought chiefly in my mind.

I remember wishing to talk of this

so that you could tell me it didn't matter.

I remember both blessing and cursing

the Odinsleep that prevented any dialogue.

I remember feeling betrayed, untrusting, and unworthy of trusting.

I remember being hurt."

He reverted to normal conversation, "On the other hand, from what I can recall, all of that occurred in a matter of days. I recall a thousand thousand days in which I was loved and trusted by you, Mother, and Thor. A thousand thousand days in which I was _not_ betrayed by my family and friends. I recall _all_ these days with equal weight. I also recall a point when the only intelligible thought I had, Father, was that I_ exist_. I did not even have the words to articulate that thought, and yet that thought still feels momentous, with more portent than any other logic or any mere shadow-memory I have. All these other concerns you bring to me right now...they are small in comparison."

Slowly, Odin nodded, watching him. "I think I understand. For us, the wound of losing you is raw and now reopened by your return. Your mother and I are filled with a need to redress the hurt we have done you. For you, though, this has been swallowed by everything else that has happened, which none of us understand as yet. There is no comparison, and you have a new context and different perspective now than you did then." He smiled then. "Your needs come first, Loki. I will certainly not push you to fixate on what bothers _me_. I think at some point, with luck, we will have another conversation about this when you are more healed. For now, though, I will content myself with showering you with love. Now, what did you boys do today?"

Loki winked at Thor. "We _hugged_."

Odin beamed at them. Frigga almost looked that she might cry.

**Author's note: Yay! A two-fer! See, I care... and I expect double the reviews in return, lol.**

**Anyways, I read an interesting article in the ****_Scientific American _****last year about the spectrum of sensation and hallucination. The signals the brain receives from the eyes, ears, and skin are raw data points, and incomplete ****_because _****they are discrete signals generated to reflect a nondiscrete reality. The brain's interpretation of this information is a game of averages and guesswork, filling in the missing data with pattern matching. Thus to a degree, everything you think you observe with the senses is at least a little bit hallucinatory. The best known example of this is the natural blind spot: there's a point in both eyes with no photoreceptors, because that's where the optic nerve itself enters the back of the eyeball. You never notice it with both eyes open, because the eyes are oriented in such a degree that the one will compensate the blind spot of the other. You only notice it with one eye closed, however, when using one of the tools so popular in books about optical illusions, where you can "make" a pattern or a spot that stands in contrast with the background "disappear" simply holding the image at different distances from your face: once the break in the pattern falls fully within the blind spot, the brain just fills in the background pattern instead to complete what it cannot see. This is just the one, obvious example though. There are a lot of steps the brain must take in order to interpret what it detects. There is sensory summation in space (****_where?)_**** and also in kind (****_what_****?). Damage to the parts of the brain responsible for this tertiary association will leave people unable to comprehend certain aspects of the world and can famously produce bizarre visual distortions like "Alice in Wonderland" syndrome where things appear too big or too small, or "Capgras syndrome" where people labor under the delusion that their loved ones have been replaced by identical imposters. Failures of association are hypothesized to underlie both disorders of some sensory disorders (like "visual snow syndrome," possibly due to noticing the incompleteness too much, like a glitch in the matrix) and the hallucinations and delusions in psychosis as well, with emotional/imaginary information being associated incorrectly along with real sensory data. For Loki, the issue is that his imagined/internal world has become too robust and therefore competitive with the real world when it comes to interpretation. It's doubly difficult because with his magic, he _can_ in fact make his hallucinations seem real to the senses as well. The laws of the mind and the laws of spacetime have collided, and logic is failing to sort them out.**

**Which brings us to the acceptance, "on faith" if you will, that the real Thor is, in fact, real. This is a variation of Pascal's wager. The original wager argues that you might as well believe in God because if he doesn't exist, the consequences and benefits of belief or disbelief are essentially nil, while if he ****_does_**** exist, and you don't believe, then the consequences are essentially infinite (eternal torment), and likewise infinite are the benefits of believing (eternal paradise). Thus, it's actually stupidly risky not to believe in God. Loki's wager is not quite so dire, but follows a similar logic. The benefits of believing Thor is real are considerable (having a brother), while the consequences of arguing with a real life Thor are quite disagreeable (Thor blubbering and generally being a bother). If it's all an illusion, then it doesn't matter if he at leasts pretends to believe... As a side note, the Christian theologians generally agree that while it is possible to logic-up reasons to believe in God, these don't actually equate to true faith, which is only granted by the mystical grace of God. ;)**


	15. Knowledge and Experience

An Infinity Stone enables the wielder to command complete control over a given natural domain, limited only by his or her imagination and durability in channeling the truly infinite energies contained within the stones. The Other had been the most creative of Thanos' minions, but he knew the risks inherent to using any Infinity Stone and allowed himself to be limited by them. Until his final, spectacular failure, the Other had won success after success for his master, but never true glory.

The Other's limitations were never so patent as now. Sifting through the accumulated memories and knowledge of both their executed comrade and their lost Asgardian prince was a rather frustrating task for Thanos and his Children. The Other had used the Mind Stone to retrieve virtually every one of the Puppet's memories in the early days of his experiments. The stone had allowed him to do so quite easily, duplicating the vast recall network of the Puppet's living brain and mapping it into the Other's host mind. The experience would have been much like a dreamed version of the Puppet's former life. Unfortunately for the Black Order, dreams fade rapidly from the consciousness as they meld with the unconscious. The Other in mere instants would have known everything the Puppet did and understood the Puppet's memories in a way Ebony never would. Simultaneously, he would have lost any ability to comprehend how much he had _learned. _How much was _new. _He would have easily recognized Loki's personal experiences as _not _his own, but everything else, all that vast stored knowledge, even particular ways of thinking amassed over thousands of years... all of that would have seemed simply his own, even if he had no memory of learning it.

Only the Mind Stone would have allowed the Other to perceive the difference between his native thoughts and the memories he had stolen. The Other had not dared tamper with his own mind more than necessary though. He had used the stone to skim the surface of the Asgardian's memories, a scoping review for information immediately pertinent to Thanos' goals and plans. The vast majority of his stolen knowledge had remained unexplored however, unceremoniously dumped into the Other's own memory, along with an abundance of headaches and _de ja vous_. The damage was obvious and irreparable when Ebony delved into the Other's head. It was as if every revelation he had learned with the stone had come by surgically excising any contradicting notions he had had originally. Even as he first scourged the Other's mind, Ebony had identified thousands of broken pathways of thought the creature would never have been aware of losing. It was a chilling lesson on both the endless potential and the dangers of dealing with an Infinity Stone.

They were now without the aid of the Mind Stone at all. Thus, they were relying heavily on Ebony Maw's careful telepathy to speed up the process at hand. He had spent over a month now in sessions of telepathically linking his mind to those of his siblings, using the mental reserve of all six to consume and understand the memories both of the Puppet and of the Other. With the consecutive memory transfers, it was more like reading through a disorganized library than reliving someone else's life, unfortunately. The task would have been easier had they kept the Other alive to help, so they could surf his mind's pathways, associations, and connections between disparate thoughts rather than sort out the jumbled mess themselves. But none of the Black Order questioned their father's decision in that matter. The Other was mentally damaged, he had failed dismally, and he got his just deserts. There was no point in wishing it otherwise now.

Ebony was himself a finite resource, however. Constructing and controlling the complex mind meld rapidly burned through his magic reserves. At the end of each session, he was utterly spent and would fall into a deep, replenishing sleep for days at a time from which he was virtually impossible to arouse. Thanos had stopped asking for immediate updates after the third session, partly due to Ebony's need to rest, and partly because every new piece of information seemed to contradict what they already thought they knew. He needed to wait for the whole. Gamora had come to him after the last one, however, and informed him they were almost done, according to Ebony's largely incoherent mumbling before he passed out. Thus, Thanos had come today to sit with his children and at last discuss their next course of action.

Currently, Ebony was lying limply on what used to be one of the Other's work tables, utterly lost in his mind and magic. The only parts of him that moved, or seemed capable of movement at the moment, were his lips and his hands, which were twined in the hair of various of his siblings as he sorted information into and out of six different heads. Corvus, Cull, Proxima, Gamora, and Nebula were slumped around him, their minds usurped and their bodies thus incapable of voluntary motion, with only the barest power of life support left to them.

Thanos sat at the end of the table, Ebony's head cupped in his hands. Every so often, the Titan ran a loving thumb over the bony ridges of his son's skull.

"We are at a disadvantage," Ebony murmured after hours that felt like days of exhausting silence.

"What have you learned, child?" Thanos asked.

"Asgard... will be a difficult foe. I could detail their defensive and offensive capabilities down to the smallest detail for you, but for now shall simply summarize: they are formidable, with few true weaknesses, their reputation and interstellar supremacy justly earned. Every one of their great wars were fought against a race arguably commensurate in power, most recently the Jotnar, and Asgard has defeated all-comers utterly. Their enemies have universally come to ruin, and _many_ I had never even heard of before because of it, such as the Dark Elves. Besides their own strengths and technologies, their race inherited several relics of the Creation War, and their other conflicts, along with the knowledge of the Stones. It is Asgard's line of kings which has subtly worked to keep the Stones dispersed throughout the ages. They have a secret law that no planet should hold more than one of the Stones, to prevent an amassment of power that could threaten their cosmic order..." Ebony grinned. "Odin has broken the edict, now. According to Nebula's report, he indeed holds the Tesseract and thus the Space Stone. Asgard also though holds the Reality Stone, secreted in the time of King Bor, though they call it the Aether, for the form it took when under the aegis of the Dark Elves. That was the enemy they claimed it from. The Puppet did not know the exact location of that Stone, though, only that it is housed somewhere on the planetoid. He only deduced the Aether and Reality Stone were one and the same long after learning of them. He _has_ been within Odin's great vault, and did not see it, though that is not to say it is not there." He opened his eyes, which were bloodshot and rimy with need of sleep. "The Puppet has also seen a great war gauntlet in the vault, hewn from a golden metal with empty settings for six stones upon the dorsal plate. Asgard may have a working Infinity Gauntlet in addition to two stones." Ebony suddenly winced then, and Thanos realized his hold upon his son's head had become a vise. He let go, and stroked Ebony's pale forehead instead, smiling as his son relaxed again.

"Enough of Asgard," Thanos said. "We will plan later how to approach them. What of the other Stones?"

"The Mind Stone of course is on Midgard at present. Nebula confirmed that as well. I think the other the Puppet sensed is the Time Stone, and if it is not in New York, it is somewhere nearby, at least it was when the Puppet was there. It will be easy to find once the time comes. The signature is very recognizable. Any of the Stones will call to a magic-user as a flame in the darkness. The Soul Stone as we already knew is on the planet Vormir. Interestingly, I think the Puppet may be the _only_ Asgardian that also knew this, yet he managed to uncover much more general lore of the Soul Stone than we did. He first heard of it from a witch who he encountered on Vanaheim, but was native of neither Vanaheim nor Asgard. I do not recognize her race and nor did he, it seems. He did corroborate as much of what she told him as he could, so I think we should take his understanding as accurate. The Stone will only bend itself to the use of one who sacrifices a loved one to it. That is fairly common knowledge. What I did not previously realize was that the sacrifice must be performed _at_ Vormir, with a ritual incantation. The witch did tell the Puppet one, but of course there is no knowing whether it is correct as she was his only source for that information. Moreover, even though the primary power of the Soul Stone is in resurrection or communion with the dead, the _sacrifice_ is permanent. Even the six stones together cannot reclaim the sacrificial soul from the arms of Lady Death. The Soul Stone can also permanently change a person as even the Mind Stone cannot. It can compel truth, see through illusions and obfuscations of mind magic or other tricks to reveal 'the heart' of the matter. The Puppet also deduced the method for raising the dead, incidentally." Ebony shook his head ruefully. "Our poor Puppet was such a scholar, Father. He centuries ago wrote an entire treatise for himself comparing and contrasting records of spells cast with the aid of Infinity Stones with similar spells using native magic only. Apparently, a number of the Infinity Stones' ancillary powers occur through interactions with spacetime via pocket dimensions contained within the stones themselves. This is the key to omnipresence using the Space Stone, conjuring using the Mind Stone, immortality using the Time Stone... Even after all this time, I _still _do not fully understand the nuances of the stones as it seems he did. Even the Other with the aid of the Mind Stone did not. I had always understood the Power Stone to be the uniting force of the six, but there is a suggestion that Mind and Soul are somehow apart from the other four. If only-"

"Do not wallow in our loss," Thanos admonished.

Ebony shuddered. "Of course. The only Stone we do not now know the general location of is the Power Stone. We do know more about how it works in concert with the others, however. I am also quite certain the Stone's signature would again have been obvious to the Puppet, so we can deduce to a degree where it _isn't_ based on his travels more recently. It isn't on Asgard, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, Midgard, or Nidavellir. He would have recognized it. As we had already guessed, we can also somewhat predict by its historical pattern where it is more likely to appear. Of the six stones, the Power Stone is most likely to become involved in empire building and other power struggles. It has never been successfully entombed as the others have at various times, only fought over and stolen by the victors, and once lost for a millennium after a great war of attrition that destroyed both sides. Our best chance to find and retrieve it will still be during the Convergence, which will occur in just under four months. There are, however, several worlds that _won't _be accessible during the Convergence, so it might be worth our while to check them, as well as the conflict areas we have already been searching."

"Hmm. You will have to explain the exact nature of the Convergence to me later. I had thought it an alignment of every world accessible through the Invisible Network."

"No, the Convergence strictly speaking is just the alignment of the Nine Realms along a single axis of the network, lasting approximately five days in total. A majority of lesser worlds will cycle through the axis at some point during the Convergence, but not all."

"I see. And the gauntlet?"

"The Puppet had less interest in that, unfortunately, except from a theoretical perspective. He deduced certain necessary materials and some of the necessary circuitry, but no more than that. He never had an intent to acquire and use the Stones for himself, after all. Nevertheless, other than the relic in Asgard, there is no known gauntlet in existence, and none outside of Nidavellir and Asgard itself confirmed to have the skill and resources to reconstruct it. Midgard has all the raw materials needed, but despite their recent advances, no known smith to design and forge it. Titan would have been similarly positioned before the cataclysm."

Thanos grimaced. "You may sleep soon, my Ebony. But first, tell me while you still hold the others in thrall and unable to hear you... knowing all there is to know from you and your siblings, the Puppet, and the Other, how would you unite the Stones and save the universe. How would you accomplish my dream?"

Ebony hesitated for only a moment. "If we move on Asgard, Midgard, or Nidavellir, Odin will surely notice, guess our purpose, and mobilize to stop us. When we move, it must be in haste. The Convergence will aid us in staging a simultaneous strike against all our targets, so long as we pick the right starting point. Our base on Titan will probably work, actually. It may not be one of the Nine, but it enters the axis of Convergence early and remains within it for twenty hours. The Power Stone should be our priority, and if we cannot locate it before the Convergence, we will need to locate and retrieve it as our first priority when the Convergence is upon us. That will be my task, followed by the Time Stone if the others are unable to find it quickly enough. Nebula and Cull are the most sensitive to them. Send some of the others for the Mind Stone, since it remains with the Avengers, and you should go to Nidavellir to extort a gauntlet, with one other to prevent any calls for help. Once these are retrieved, we should retreat temporarily to obtain the Soul Stone, so that we can confront Asgard with four Stones against their two. To retrieve the Soul Stone, _you_ will have to sacrifice one of us... If we _are _able to obtain the Power Stone prior to the Convergence, it may be possible to accelerate the course and obliterate Asgard before they can even unite their own Stones. I would go with some others of the Black Order to Midgard. Either you would proceed directly to Vormir with a sacrificial victim, or depending on how much you trust them, you could still go to Nidavellir and instead send Corvus and Proxima to Vormir."

"Do you think I could trust Corvus to sacrifice Proxima?"

"Possibly. I am more certain that Proxima would sacrifice Corvus for you, though."

"Interesting... but no. If we take the lore you have learned of the Soul Stone literally, then it will bend only to the person who has made the sacrifice. I cannot risk that."

"Actually, the Puppet did find two accounts of dual-wielders of the Soul Stone. The sacrifice was beloved by both wielders. If the deed is performed under your orders, and the victim is one that you truly love, then the Stone will still be beholden to you."

"A possibility then. You have done well, my son. Rest now, and we shall plan the details with your siblings when you are awake."

**Author's note: I'm back! Sorry. Distracted. Not a whole lot to say about this chapter. It's an exploration of the power and limitations of telepathy: even if you can read minds, you're not going to "know" things the same way your subject does, unless your own mind transforms (as happened to the Other with the "perfect" memory transference with the Mind Stone). In reality, every time you recall a thought, it is slightly changed by the act of recollection. This is because of neuroplasticity; using a connection in the brain reinforces it, strengthens it, makes the circuit more likely to fire again. For example, a certain scent might trigger a memory because of the close connections between the olfactory cortex and hippocampus, but in the future, not only will the scent be more likely to trigger the memory, but you will also remember that that scent triggers that memory, and so the act of recollection is itself changed. You can remember _what _you have read before as well as _when _you last read it and how you felt at the time... Learning what someone else knows is very, very different from experiencing what someone else experiences. This gets into the difference between declarative (what you can say, "I remember...") and nondeclarative memory (unconscious, unstated memory). Declarative memory is subdivided into episodic memory (personal experiences), and semantic memory (general knowledge). In this story, the Other accidentally incorporated Loki's semantic memory as well as some nondeclarative memory to such an extent it seemed an extension of his own (even if some part of him must have realized his error, he could not consciously detect the difference), whereas he could recognize episodic memory as Loki's _or _his.**

**I am very unsatisfied with my chapter title. Oh well. Bonus points to anyone who comes up with a better one in the reviews.**


	16. A Miracle of Translation

Thor sat in the windowsill of Loki's bedroom watching the spectacular sunset. It was the solstice, and the mingling of the two suns was beautiful. Odin sat on Loki's bed with his back to the window, content to only watch the sunlight paint the walls opposite, content because Loki was using his lap as a pillow as he ploughed through the latest book they had brought him that evening. Loki loved reading even more than he loved light, and tasting, it turned out to absolutely no one's surprise. He would happily ignore anyone and anything else once he had his nose in a book, so they only let him have one at a time. Since Loki generally ignored them, the evenings in Loki's room had become a strange time for Thor and his parents to ruminate together, talking mostly about Loki, but also about the goings-on at court and anything else that privacy demanded not be said in more public places throughout the day. Loki's room was simultaneously a peaceful haven for the royal family and their ultimate source of tension and heartache.

"I have been thinking," Thor said as the first sun finally sank below the horizon. "Father, I am grown convinced that someone did this _to _Loki, and for a purpose."

"I have thought as much ever since you brought him home, but had no evidence to prove it. What makes you so certain today, Thor?"

"Several things. Chiefest is still simply the fact of his survival. He fell from the Bifrost, where there is nothing for him to fall into. It is already unheard of for something lost to the Void to pass safely through the veins of Yggdrasil and back to the Nine Worlds. It seems beyond belief for him to appear on Midgard in quest of the Tesseract at the same time I was."

"Unless it was the Tesseract which called him from the Void," Odin commented. "Such a thing would not be beyond its power, and the mortals could have activated it in their meddling."

"If you say that is a possibility, I would not deny it, but that would not explain the scepter he carried. He had it with him from the moment of his appearance, according to Heimdall. He must have exited the Void somewhere else, where he acquired it."

"Well reasoned so far, my son. I have a question for you, though, before you continue. What _is_ the Tesseract? Do you actually know?"

Thor hesitated, but Loki didn't, answering the question in a sing-song voice,

"Conceive space: imagined structure,

A cube of points and lines.

Perceive space: unmade of finite maths,

Curved and recurved, formless and void.

Octachoron! Octahedroid!

Infinite eights, cube unto cube,

Holt of space, the summa-sanctum,

Wise geometer's chamber of secrets,

Object of Metatron, Die of Fate...

The Tesseract, Cosmic Cube."

Thor and Odin both stared at him, partly in surprise at what he had said, partly in surprise that he had said anything at all. He usually didn't in the evenings. "You're singing again?" Thor asked with a nervous laugh. "I thought you were done with that."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean. But most of the information about the Infinity Gems predate the written record and was instead remembered in music and verse," Loki answered in a more normal tone. "The Tesseract in the titular sense is the four-dimensional container for the Space Stone, third of the Infinity Gems, which is itself of infinite dimensions. The Tesseract is a glorious paradox. The stone it contains offers the ability to bend space to those able to wield it and dare take the risks."

"Is that true?" Thor asked Odin slowly.

"Of course it is," Loki said.

"I believe it is," Odin confirmed. "That is why it was so urgent to retrieve it once the humans discovered it."

Loki turned to look at him incredulously. "You have the Tesseract?"

"...yes."

"Fascinating." He fell silent again, no longer appearing interested in either of them.

"What _is _an Infinity Gem?" Thor asked, still watching his brother.

"Thor, I am certain you must have learned about them at _some _point in your education," Odin said with a hint of reproach, though his overall tone was that of amusement.

"Probably, but I must have forgotten."

Loki started singing again, though his verse still had no rhyme and a rather subtle meter, more a chant than a song:

"The Infinity Stones: a set of six jewels,

Ancient ornaments, dear-valued treasure,

Creation of the first, the sentient powers,

Six fundamental features of nature:

Space, time, reality, power, mind, and... soul... _I think_.

Worthy men won them; War-death reclaimed them.

Perilous hoard for a ring-twisted armor:

The Soul stone: mistress of life,

sweet death of love, repository of the lost,

Devondra's domain.

The Time stone: all-seeing, omniscient,

bringer of birth and death and renewal,

the End and Ellipsis.

The Space stone: omnipresent,

the Drawer, the Warper,

the Vast against the Void.

The Mind stone: deepest thinker,

dream-weaver, thought-maker,

the Mindscape of the Sleepwalker.

The Reality stone: _un_-real and alternate,

the Liar that makes truth,

plaything of Archivus, drafter of the World Pool.

Power stone: energy and annihilation,

omnipotence, the Ultimate,

Dynamus' Arena..."

Loki laughed before continuing gaily,

"Ego stone! Mind of vengeance, Nemesis' dream!

Rhythm stone! The Liar's lie!

Light stone! Purest radiance! Hallowed of Varda!

Dream stone! Hope to hopeless. Nightmare of Atë!

Continuity stone! Ear of the gods!

Void stone! Hollowness and Hunger!

Death stone! End of all Enders!"

Loki broke off in a fit of maniacal laughter.

"Uh, Father, how many stones are there?"

"Six, according to legend."

"Six," Loki agreed, nodding.

"So... was Loki telling us true?"

"Of course," Loki said.

"I think the first part of it was. I am not well-read on the lore of the infinity gems, but they are absolutely a subject Loki would have read about before. I think the first six he named are the real six."

"They're all real!" Loki protested.

"Loki, you said there were only six, but you named thirteen," Odin told him calmly.

"Did I?" His face grew pensive, and he shrugged. "There are only supposed to be six. I must have made the rest of them up. Sorry." He did not appear overly concerned by this. Lady Eir had a word for that, actually. _Anosagnosia. _It meant Loki lacked the ability to recognize his own disability. He knew he couldn't tell what was real the same way Thor could (or _thought_ he could, as Loki saw it), but he rarely regarded this as a problem, except in that it bothered others. He only sometimes truly seemed to recognize that he was not well. Most of the time, he forgot, or as Eir said, simply could not understand the concept as yet.

"So... are space, time, reality, power, mind, and soul the real ones then?" Thor asked, just to be clear. Loki frequently spouted what seemed to be utter nonsense, but he did also still have a lot of knowledge packed into his sick brain.

"Maybe," Loki answered. "I can't tell. The truth and the lies all feel the same to me."

"...Ah." They had made next to no progress on that particular problem. Loki still relied on Thor to ground him in reality, and he at times seemed to take a wicked pleasure in designing more and more realistic illusions to confuse Thor. Frigga had explained why: despite what he said, Loki still didn't actually trust Thor to be correct and was unconsciously trying to catch him in an error. It was exhausting.

Loki continued obliviously, "Also, I said there were six stones, which is correct, but since there are really only two infinitudes, the One and the All, it might be more technically correct to say there are only two stones with six faces between them. Technically correct is the best kind of correct."

"I think I will regret asking this, but now I have no idea what you're talking about so, Loki, what are the One and the All?" Odin asked.

Loki sat up, cleared his throat dramatically and recited,

"All expanses and capacities, all length, all breadth, all depth:

All territory a vessel.

All seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, centuries and millennia:

All ages a moment.

All matter, all bodies, all beings, all substance, all existence:

all mere possibilities.

All energies, all capabilities, all forces, all potentials:

All might a pliant tool.

Once seven are united, One wields All.

One to be alive, to know life, to love living;

One lover, beloved, and lover's love of beloved;

One mind, knowledge, and consciousness;

One memory, purpose, and will;

One mind's remembering itself, understanding itself, and willing itself;

One knowing, one understanding, and one willing:

Thus does divinity begin, and end."

Loki watched them expectantly then sighed. "You still do not understand, do you? I've actually been trying to explain the concept ever since I remembered how to speak, albeit in a different context for a different reason, but perhaps it is simply beyond my ability to teach, and I don't think you want to _really_ learn it the way I did."

"...How did you, ah, learn this wisdom, Loki?"

"By becoming All. That's not the traditional way to do it. You're supposed to become the One, obviously. It certainly worked, though. Except for tomorrow, I don't have any memories of understanding nearly so well."

"You don't have any memories of tomorrow, Loki," Thor pointed out.

"You might not, but I do. Or if I don't, the imaginings are very convincing, and I hope they become memories."

"Oh? What do you remember about tomorrow, then?" Odin asked.

"Besides meditating on the nature of All and One? I read five books and six people brought me cakes, and they were real."

"Ah. I see. Well, that was an illuminating side-track," Odin chuckled.

"One of them was made of cloudberries from Midgard. The people were real too. They were friends of Thor's."

"Of course. Right, where were we? Thor, you were going to talk about the scepter, I believe."

"Er, yes. I talked to several scholars about the scepter and the stone it contained today. I had given them sketches of the designs I saw a few weeks ago to study, but I didn't tell them it was Loki's weapon on Midgard. Anyhow, all of them recognized it as a type of mind magic device." He unfolded a copy of the diagram and started pointing out the various components, as both Odin and Loki leaned over it in interest. "The scepter functions as a controlling device, and the stone seemed to be both power source and conduit to the victim's mind. I think whoever found Loki in the Void must have found him much as he was when I brought him home. They already had this stone and then fashioned the device around it in order to access and control his sleeping mind."

"...Plausible, from what little we know. Finish it."

"That's the Mind Stone," Loki interrupted.

Thor dropped the papers in surprise.

"It _is_?" Odin asked.

Loki nodded as he watched the loose papers flutter to the floor. Thor stooped to pick them up again, staring at the drawings in wonder.

"How do you know?" Odin asked.

"I just do. I can tell from the machinery encasing the central stone. I don't know of anything else it could be, and I would be very surprised if your so-called scholars had anything else in mind when you showed this to them." He suddenly sounded entirely rational again. "Either they do not know the lore of the stones, or they are trying to conceal this from you, Thor," he finished grimly.

Thor whistled. "Loki, could someone use the Mind Stone to distort your mind the way it is, so you can't tell what's real anymore?"

Loki grinned wryly. "I don't think you can trust any answer I might give to that question. I might have read the books, but I've never seen the stone, unless it was so underwhelming as to appear imaginary in my memory. Or if I have truly seen it, as your tone intimates, then by your very question my judgement on the matter is lost to you." His brows drew close together in thought. "I _do _have a memory, though I might have imagined it, in which I thought I knew much more than I know now. If you were to ask the me of _then, _I would say that the destruction of a living mind is not one of the Mind Stone's functions." He shrugged. "I can count the things I _know _on my fingers and toes, though." He held up his hands, watching his fingers intently. His fingers suddenly multiplied nauseatingly before he abruptly dropped the illusion again with a shrug.

Thor tried to wrap his mind around what Loki just said. "You have a memory of thinking you knew... never mind. Your grammar confounds me, brother, so I will take that as a 'yes.' That leaves the question of motive only. Whoever sent Loki after the Tesseract, they could have had him for months or days before sending him to Midgard, but send him they did. They wanted the Tesseract more than they wanted the scepter... the Mind Stone. Our enemy probably learned of the Tesseract's location the same way we did, from the flare of interstellar power emitted during the humans' great war decades ago that my friend Steve fought in. Whoever did this, they have a base at least as close to Midgard as Asgard is, possibly closer since they managed to send Loki as their agent a little before I could arrive." Thor's brow furrowed in thought. "Although, now I say it out loud, this still doesn't entirely make sense. If the enemy had one of the six infinity stones, where does that leave us? Why would they risk the one they had to gain the Tesseract?"

"Strategic value," Odin said. "As Loki said, sort of, the Space Stone can bend space, warp it any way it likes. Using the Space Stone, one can travel between the furthest reaches of the universe without the inconvenience of needing a ship to navigate the veins of Yggdrasil. The portal Loki opened on Midgard is but a small sample of its power. Even our Bifrost is a pale imitation."

"_I _had the Tesseract?" Loki asked in surprise.

"Yes," Odin said simply.

"Fascinating. _And _the Mind Stone. Fascinating..."

"You compare it to the Bifrost," Thor said slowly.

"Indeed, I _do_ compare it to the device that granted Asgardian supremacy across the Nine Realms," Odin agreed.

"Any enemy of ours would want it," Thor concluded.

"_Yes_. At best, Loki is in fact guilty of all that has happened," Odin said solemnly. "He already had the Mind Stone as a well-kept secret from the rest of us, and the magic of the stone is what protected his consciousness when he fell from the Bifrost. The flare from the Space Stone drew him from the Void to the holdings of the Chitauri, where he used the Mind Stone to subjugate the simple race prior to his power-hungry invasion of Midgard, and it was his own mishandling of both stones that landed him in his current state."

"At _best?_" Thor objected incredulously. "Do you _want _Loki to be guilty?"

"At worst, Asgard faces a foe who is collecting infinity stones," Loki said quietly. "If that is the case, we face a renewed Creation War. The Cosmic Entities themselves fought over the stones when they were first made. Anything approaching a conflict of that magnitude could destroy the Nine Realms entirely. I hope I _am _guilty, for all our sakes."

Thor winced at Loki's words, but chose to ignore his last statement. "The Creation War? Now that, I remember hearing about. _In a children's story_," Thor accused.

Odin shook his head. "If you had attended more history classes with your brother, you might know more about it. But truly, the details are not common knowledge for a reason. The infinity stones were scattered and lost as a result of the war. Most people are better off not knowing about them."

Loki again,

"Six scattered powers, burning through the Void,

Flotsam of a ruinous war that made the victors weep.

Six sacred weapons, lost but not destroyed,

Seeds to grow a bitter harvest, for Lady Death to reap.

One found its way to Eson, and Eson soon was gone.

One rests inside a challenge, which only few have won.

One fell to Agamotto, and its secrets lost with him,

Lost to future or to past, and hasn't been seen again.

One fell from hand to hand and burnt each one to hold.

One fell to Titan, and thence none know, once the dread bell tolled.

One bent the world to Malekith, until King Bor i'gained;

He sent the lesser of his two to Midgard, th'other broke in twain."

Odin's one eye widened in shock. "You know about... the hoard of Bor?"

"You mean the Aether? The Celestial Wind of Paradise and Perdition? The Seed of Possibility?" Loki smiled faintly. "Yes, of course."

Odin swore.

"What is it?" Thor asked in alarm. The Allfather never swore, at least not out loud.

Odin regarded him with a pained look. "Let's just say I broke a vow when I sent you to retrieve the Tesseract, Thor. I had hoped no one in the universe would realize it, though."

"_Both_ are still here? You have _two _infinity stones on one planet?!" Loki exclaimed in alarm. "Have _you _lost your mind, Allfather?"

"And there it is," Odin groaned.

"Asgard already had one of the stones?" Thor asked in confusion.

"Technically, yes. It's a crown secret you would have learned after your coronation. Loki should _not _have known about it."

"Really? Why not?" Loki asked in surprise.

"Because it's a secret."

"Ah. Logical."

"And we are in a lot of trouble if anyone else knows about it," Odin informed them grimly.

"If I'm right, and someone did this to Loki and sent him to Midgard, then we probably have to assume they know about this 'Aether' as well," Thor remarked.

Loki raised his eyebrows. "Our hypothetical enemy presumably knows the whereabouts of three of the stones, then. If not more." He straightened up and glared suspiciously at Odin. "Assuming you are real, and he is real, and this conversation did happen as I think I heard it, and that Thor is correct... a lot of assumptions, but still, _this seems urgent!"_

"Loki, calm yourself."

_"No._"

"He's right," Odin said. "This _is _urgent. Asgard cannot allow anyone to collect Infinity Stones. Not even us, under usual circumstances. Come Thor, we must speak to your mother and to Heimdall."

Thor and Odin both stood up and started walking towards the door, Loki still watching them worriedly, though he was lucid enough not to get up and follow them. "I will communicate with Midgard," Thor said. "To check on the stone there and warn the Avengers. We can retrieve it if needed..." He stopped in his tracks and looked back at Loki. "Do you know where any of the other ones might be, brother?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "How could I possibly _know_ something like that?"

"Where might you imagine them to be, then?" Odin interceded.

"Ah... For Power and Time, I have no idea. As I said, Time was lost with Agamotto, long ago even as I see it. No one could say where he went when he vanished. Power is always found in the hands of warlords, but otherwise I could not say. The Soul stone though... unless it has been recently retrieved, it resides eternally in Vormir."

"Vormir? Where is that?" Thor asked.

Loki looked around, then pointed vaguely upwards. "That way, I think," he said unhelpfully.

"We will search the star charts in the Library," Odin said quickly. "Come, Thor."

**Author's note: hopefully you enjoyed all that confusion. For this chapter, I was really thinking about the difficulties and failures of communication. Loki knows a lot of things, but he does not know what is relevant most of the time, particularly as he of course is still struggling with the difference between reality and imagination: his knowledge is like the internet with a bad search algorithm. Everything is there, but it is impossible to find what you are looking for and easy to misinterpret once you do find something. Thor and Odin have to play detective to figure out what is happening. They base this mostly on their own assumptions about the world and integrating Loki's arcane knowledge with their existing worldview rather than really understanding Loki's perspective, except with the "meeting of the minds" at the end, where they are all finally talking about the same thing for the same reason: the possible threat to Asgard. **

**"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."**

**-George Bernard Shaw**

**"Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know."**

**-Jim Rohn**

**Other notes: anosagnosia is a real thing and interesting to read about. There's a whole list of -agnosias on Wikipedia for the inability to recognize various things. Could probably catalogue a lot of other agnosias Loki was struggling with earlier in this fiction, like verbal agnosia before he realized that the sounds people were making were actually language...**

**Other other notes: I'm not going to explain all the poetry, but I will mention that I found Thomas Aquinas' meditations on the nature of the Trinity inspiring for the lines about "the One." Aquinas attempts in the _Summa Theologica _to provide a logical explanation for why the One God of Christianity is _necessarily_ also a Trinity. For my very reductive explanation, "God the Father" is the "perfect being," the first mover/first cause/necessary being/absolute being/grand designer. "God the Son" is a necessary consequence of the existence of "God the Father," because a perfect being must be aware and must indeed be perfectly aware. Perfect awareness/knowledge/understanding of the perfect being must necessarily duplicate the perfection in the form of thought. Thus, "God the Son" is the "perfect knowing" proceeding from the perfect being. "God the Holy Spirit" is a necessary consequence of the existence of the other two: philosophically speaking, it is impossible to be fully aware of and understanding of the perfect being without also loving it, because it is the nature of true perfection to be loved absolutely. "God the Holy Spirit" is not a _person_ in the way that most people would understand the term but rather the force of "perfect love" which necessarily proceeds from the perfect knowledge of the perfect being. The Holy Spirit is so named not because of what it _is_ but what it _does_, an entity named for its acts rather than its substance.**

**I find Aquinas' God the Son very interesting, because of the implication of perfect awareness of **_everything. _**Thinking about it sometimes lends me perspective, imagining a perfect mind with a perfect understanding of **_absolutely everything, the whole general mishmosh._** Whole new meaning to the word omniscience.**

**If you would like to be further confused, you can go read the _Summa _yourself.**


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